I'm Starting to Believe In Conspiracy Theories

 

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This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"If I don't run for presidnet, we'll all be OK." -Joe Biden (2015) 

"I don't want to be president." -Donald Trump (1987)

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Quick! 50 years from now, what will professors, pundits, and scholars...

{Oh my!}

...Say were the major accomplishments of the Obama presidency?

{The fact he and the little woman were worth about a million and a half in January of 2008 and are now worth about $70,000,000 and own four houses comes to mind. I'll bet his daughters aren't dealing with college loan payments.}

I haven't given the infamous Choom Gang's most famous alumnus much thought lately, however...

{Choom Gang?} 

Well, as far as I know (I haven't read any of his books) although Mr. Obama has freely admitted that, unlike Slick Willie, he did inhale, and he did do a little blow, he hasn't gone into great detail about the Choom Gang, which is what he and the dudes he got stoned with in high school called themselves.

However, some of them did, and in case you missed it, google Choom Gang, and all sorts of different tokes takes on the story pop up. But who knows which details are true, which are exaggerated, and which are made up? Or, more importantly in my semi-humble opinion, why did his friends feel compelled to snitch and not avail themselves of a "no comment."  

{Right? With friends like those etc., hey you're not gonna claim that... Wait-wait-wait. Choom?}

Hawaiian slang for smoking weed (pakalolo), Dana, to choom is to smoke weed (at least when Mr. Obama was in high school, I don't know about now). It has other meanings in other contexts. The "gang" traveled around town in a VW Microbus owned by one of its members they called the Choomwagon.    

Big BUT, Mr. Obama it seems, has no shortage of friends in the news media willing to mind their own business these days when it comes to what The Swamp's most famous resident gets up to when he has friends over.

{He still lives in D.C., full-time?}

Looks that way, but honestly, I don't know. I googled my brains out but that information is hard to come by.

{Probably a Secret Service thing.} 

Perhaps. 

Not long ago, I was in the process of pursuing input via my daily morning routine of carefully constructed input inputting...

{You were sucking on your first cup of Cafe Bustelo while treading water in the Dizzinformation Ocean, yes?}

That's what I said. Anyway, I was reading a Holman W. Jenkins Jr. column in the Wall Street Journal about... 

{Holman who?}

A columnist I follow who writes a column, twice a week, for the WSJ. I'm a fanboy. 

The column was primarily about Mr. Jenkins's opinion that President Biden needs to find a way to push Kamala Harris aside and add a strong VP candidate to the ticket to solve some of the problems standing between Biden and a second term. 

{I see where you're going but I don't see Obama agreeing to be Uncle Joe's VP candidate.}

I don't think so either, although it would be interesting. But my buddy Holman happened to remark in passing on the fact that Obama declined to follow tradition and get out of Dodge, and out of the way, of his successor. 

Instead, the tribune of the downtrodden residents of the Southside of Chicago bought himself an $8,100,000 mansion in D.C., two miles from the White House, one (last time I checked) of four high-end houses he owns.     

{To be fair it's a relatively small mansion. It only has 9 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms... your buddy Holman?}

Yeah... if not for some obviously very bad karma. Holie's point, although it wasn't the point of his column, was that it's strange, that given there are hungry herds of reporters roaming the streets of Washington in search of prey, apparently none of them stake out the Obama House. 

Rather curious given that it seems to be the favorite domicile of our former commander and chief... but I can't say for sure because of the paucity of information referred to above. You can go a-googlin' if you don't believe me. 

Allegedly, there are frequent gatherings of former Obama minions (and others) who are now Biden minions who work at a different but much better-known, D.C. house. 

{Well, perhaps they're just being nice and giving him some space.}

Nice national reporters? In America? In 2023? There's no feckin' way that...

Wait a second!

Your dimwitted columnist has an aha! moment.

Given that the WSJ is a national newspaper that's so committed to old-school, traditional, objective journalism they print the real names of people (subscribers only) who comment on articles and op-eds, with millions of readers, and 1,800 or so reporters in 45 countries... 

Why aren't they staking out the Obama's D.C. digs?

{I hear Secret Service agents carry weapons.}  

As it turns out, the street in front of Mr. Obama's house is blocked off, and only approved (and I assume carefully vetted) visitors and approved (and I assume vetted, at least I hope so) delivery drivers are given access. 

But why aren't any lean and hungry reporters monitoring who attends what are supposed to be regular gatherings at the Obama House just by staking out both ends of both streets and keeping track of who is coming and going?

{What if they do but they're being chased off?}

That would be a story unto itself.

{What if they're aren't any regular meetings/gatherings/whateverings at the Obama House?}

I thought of that but according to Mr. Jenkins, who's in a position to know, this is common knowledge in Washington. Perhaps he was nudging his bosses at the WSJ. 

{Whatever. Why should I/we care?}

Well, let's review. A former POTUS, despite multiple decades of tradition, lives a couple of miles from the White House in a home that's apparently his primary residence and hangs out with former staffers who are now current White House staffers (and who knows who else) and the rabid press isn't interested?

Never mind, I'm probably just paranoid. I gotta go, someone's knocking and holding up a Secret Service badge in front of the Ring camera on my front door. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Conspiracy Theories

A conspiracies of convenience/chaos column.

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted. Best perused on a screen large enough for even your parents to see and navigate easily.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy...the safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health food." -P.J. O'Rourke

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I've written before about conspiracy theory. 

{Not really. You wrote about The Fedrl Gummits corrupt ethanol policy. A policy that can't be changed because the corruption is endorsed by both teams, is legal (technically if not ethically), and called it a conspiracy of convenience. That's not really...}

Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh. I clearly stated, and continue to maintain, that most so-called conspiracies are merely conspiracies of convenience. To which I would add, and/or chaos. More on that anon.  

{That's what they want you to think!}

Alrighty then, Dana.

John Durham, gentleperson, is one of those exceptions that prove the rule. That is to say, although his long career as a respected prosecutor includes various stints in the Swamp, he's never gone native and become a Swamp Creature. In fact, at the moment, he's wading through the muck and mire of Washington D.C. in search of truth, and not for the first time. 

{Who?}

A career prosecutor that looks so intimidating that if he were investigating me I'd confess to having been a drug dealer for about an hour in the late seventies. 

{What?!?}

Suffice it to say, being a pothead on a shelf stocker's salary wasn't easy. I got the brilliant idea to become a small-time dealer and sell just enough of the Devil's Weed to make it possible to supply myself with free product. 

I launched my new venture by going to a friend's party and offering (with his permission) to enhance any given party-goer's experience via the purchase of a small amount of Mother Nature's finest. After an hour or so of some very interesting conversational encounters, I declared my new business bankrupt. 

I secured permission from my buddy to take a quick shower and spent the rest of the evening fending off friends and perfect strangers who kept asking, "Are you the guy that..." by replying, "Nope, not me, I think he left." 

I woke up the next morning — carefully uncoiled my cramped body that had managed to fit itself into a tiny loveseat by apparently accepting that it was okay for my head to be propped up at an unnatural and potentially dangerous angle — and, as usual, made it to work on time. Ah, the good old days. 

{Right... And who's John Durham?}   

John Durham was a highly respected career prosecutor considered kosher by both Team Red and Team Blue till former Attorney William Bar appointed him in 2018 to look into who did what back in 2016 that led to the FBI investigating the Donald and company to see if they were colluding with the Pooteen and company.

Mr. Durham is still on the job and has since indicted a Democratic party lawyer, Michael Sussman, for allegedly lying to the FBI when they were investigating what happened. This is why Mr. Durham has fallen out of favor with the Blue team. 

Durham and Sussman were both recently in the news when Durham filed a report that... 

<THIS SPACE DELIBERATELY LEFT BLANK>

Actually, technically, I should've written this space deliberately deleted or, at this point this column was nearly abandoned. 

See, I originally made repeated attempts to explain why the report filed by Durham was — but hopefully is no longer — a RBFD by the time you read this. Team Red made some controversial deductions and went nuts.

Team Blue, as is their wont, ignored it till they didn't/couldn't because Team Red was getting too much attention from Joe and Joan Bagadonuts, and they went nuts.

Being a semi-conscientious, community-minded columnist,  I read multiple news reports and scoured other sources with the idea that I would eventually arrive at a carefully reasoned position and pass it along to my gentlereaders. 

{You're my hero.}

There's no need for sarcasm, I'm just a wanna-be well-known (but reclusive) nationally recognized cultural commentator but...    

{Whatever. Why did you abandon ship mid-voyage?}

A revelation dawned, the conspiracies of chaos referenced in the subtitle of this column.

I continue to maintain that most so-called conspiracies are conspiracies of convenience, by which I mean the players become involved because of a mutual interest in an opportunity that comes along that involves power/money/sex/all of the above, etc.

{Yeah, but there could still be a Dr. Evil type behind the scenes.}

Absabalutely, but what happens when there are so many players, and the alleged conspiracy is so complex, and there are so many third parties weighing in because the information age makes it possible to do so, that getting to the bottom of something becomes virtually impossible?

A conspiracy of chaos. The information age is also the golden age of propaganda, and given how easy it is to exploit that phenomenon for fun and profit, what's a "user" to do?

{Geesh, fact-checkers, obviously.}

There's no need for yet more sarcasm...

{There's always room for Jello (or a suitable substitute), sarcasm, and proverbs: The more things change the more they stay the same.}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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A Conspiracy Theory

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids (who exist), and my great-grandkids (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                                -Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay- 

                  
Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"The growth in ethanol and biodiesel is something that I have worked on since I was secretary of agriculture in Kansas. I would like to see a lot more progress, because I think there is a real score to be made on this." -Sam Brownback 


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Since I'm running for king via a write-in campaign, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I should run the country if elected. After all, look at how effective the never-ending conspiracies of the Deep State have been at messing with the Donald.

As you can no doubt well imagine, this is a daunting task requiring much in-depth pondering.

[Almost too much for one mere mortal I would think.]

Too true, Dana, too true.

But since no one with a clue would want to be the king, or even president, of a republic that's in the middle of a cold civil war (so far anyways, fingers crossed...) and facing a future of financial and epidemiological uncertainty, who's more qualified than me?

[Exactly!... No, wait a second, are you saying that...]

I'm saying this would be the perfect time to insert an Uncle Joe/Daffy Donald joke but I'm above that sort of thing so I won't.


The Original Persons (OPs), aka the Founding Fathers, having read the classics, set up a republic because they knew that the fly in the democracy ointment was that democracies tended to devolve into rival factions competing for power and goodies (sound familiar?) and tyrannies (fingers on the other hand crossed).

This would be the perfect time to insert a joke about all those folks who are still waiting for the Donald to declare himself Lord High Muckety-Muck and start locking people up in all those FEMA built concentration camps. It's almost as if most of them never really believed what they were saying in the first place.

I believe that conscious conspiracies, that is to say, secret evil plots designed and implemented by an evil genius/family/organization/etceteration, are, at best, mostly crap.

[Mostly?]

Wiggle room, Dana, wiggle room. Anything's possible, although many things are unlikely.

However, I'm a firm believer in conspiracies of convenience.

[And what exactly are...]

Read on, my imaginary friend.


A conspiracy of convenience is one that doesn't require a Dr. Evil or even a Simon Bar Sinister to concoct and control.

A group of people who just so happen to benefit from particular policies or Rules&Regs can find themselves involved in the same conspiracy without ever having met most, if any, of their fellow conspirators.

The pursuit of riches and/or power creates conspiracies out of thin air.

[This would be a great time for an example.]

For example, ethanol.


Let the game begin!

In 2005, The Fedrl Gummit gifted the republic with the Energy Policy Act. Like all big honkin' laws created by the Leviathan, dissecting which senator, congressperson, lawyer, or lobbyist is responsible for what provision is virtually impossible.

Not a conspiracy, just a whole lot of people chasing money, power, and reelection. This is how a nationwide game of You Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours gets started spontaneously.

The act, among many other provisions that provide subsidies from Uncle Sugar, mandated blending ethanol with gasoline via the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The Renewable Fuel Standard is a sprawling mess that's been a very effective jobs program. As for cleaning up the environment, not so much.

I found an excellent article in Reason from 2014 that tells the whole awful story. The following paragraph from the article sums things up nicely.

"America's ethanol requirement destroys the environment, damages car engines, increases gas prices, and contributes to the starvation of the global poor. It's an unmitigated disaster on nearly every level." 

[What?...why?...I mean...] 

Simple, so many people are feeding at the corn trough that ethanol is now an industry.


Meet the Renewable Fuels Association. "We are the leading trade association for America's ethanol industry, working to expand demand for American-made renewable fuels and bio-products worldwide." 

Check out their website: They are literal flag wavers. 

Mission statement translation: We're the leading cabal (there's so much money to be made it takes more than one) in a conspiracy of convenience. Unleash the lobbyists!  


Jim Doti and Laurence Iannaccone conveniently published an article in the Wall Street Journal just as I was trying to figure out how to end this column. Thanks, guys. You can access it via my Facebook page without having a WSJ subscription. 

Bottom line? We're swimming in ethanol because so much is being produced, but "...fuel producers can’t use it, since adding any more to gasoline will damage car engines."

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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We are the leading trade association for America’s ethanol industry, working to drive expanded demand for American-made renewable fuels and bio-products worldwide.







 


 


 

Deep State

A review (sorta/kinda)

yeoldefrog

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my (eventual) grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who don't, yet) -- the Stickies -- to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

[The following column is rated SSC (Sexy Seasoned Citizens). If read by grups or callowyutes it may result in psychological/emotional/etceteralogical triggering.]

                                                 Glossary  

                                         Just who IS this guy?

Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars 

Dana -- A Gentlereader
Iggy -- A Sticky (GT*)

Marie-Louise -- My Muse (GT*)

*Currently Grand Touring 

"Something that confirms all fears and many conspiracy theories about government is finding out what our elected representatives would put into law if they could."                                                                          - P.J. O'Rourke 


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

I'm not a critic. Well, I guess I am since my letters/columns are often critical of this, that, or even that. But I'm talking about those lucky few whose job -- that is to say someone pays them -- is to write reviews about this, that, or even that.

[Lucky few?]

Yeah, Dana, obviously. If someone paid me to watch TV or movies, play video games, listen to music, etceteric, and then express my opinion to the world, I'd thank God twice a day for my sweet gig.] 

Anyways... I want to discuss a television show that's running, at the time this being written at least, on ePix "...an American premium cable and satellite television network that is owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." -Wikipedia


To begin with, I want to talk about what a stroke of genius the title is.

The term Deep State, as I use it, is a term that refers to the members of the unelected bureaucracy with enough power to thwart the actions of elected politicians and who can be hard to get rid of 'cause they're professional swamp dwellers who know how to game the system.

My version of the Deep State includes the 670,000 employees of The Gummit's 2,000,000 employees who are in unions and are in the enviable position of negotiating their contracts with people that pay them with other people's money, and often, who also want their votes.

BIG BUT,

The term Deep State means whatever the user wants it to mean and there is no shortage of H. sapiens who use it as the name for their favorite conspiracy theory who range from relatively rational to card-carrying members of the Tinfoil Hat Club.

And therefore,

The title appeals to a prodigious audience of passionate personages. The series tilts in a tinfoil hat direction. There's an evil, obscenely rich oligarch with people placed all over the Swamp, all over the planet actually, who do his bidding.

[He's more dastardly and more powerful than Simon Barsinister and all the would-be Underdogs (more below) are anti-heroes.]     


If someone asked me my opinion of the show I'd say, "Meh... could be worse -- not always awful, but not good either. The first season is better than the second."

I'm not impressed by the often hokey, predictable dialog. The show's emphasis, near obsession, with the personal domestic situations of the main characters gets old.

Spies, we learn -- both bad guys and good guys, well, bad guys and not as bad guys, alleged good guys and/or tragically conflicted guys, all of whom drop bodies like litterbugs drop Kleenex -- have seemingly no end of difficulty in maintaining healthy personal relationships. 


What I really want to talk about is the show's relentlessly recurring underlying theme -- blame America first.

And,

Point out that while not a few of my fellow Citizens of the Republic have become somewhat obsessed with Russian interference in our affairs...

[A time-honored tradition in which America (at least I hope so) enthusiastically gives as good as it gets.]

Via social media in general, and claiming that the Pooteen has made the Donald his bitch, specifically,

I wonder why they aren't demanding investigations/regulation/censorship of Hollywood?

I'll betcha a bottle a soda pop that the Endless Entertainment Industrial Complex brainwashes more Americans before breakfast than the Pooteen and social media do all day long.


Permit me to clear the decks by stating that I'm not a, My Country Right or
Wrong type. If your country is in the wrong you should say so, without fear of retribution.

I'll go first. Iraq was a mistake. Afghanistan was/is a HOOGE mistake.

Also, I get that Hollywood is about entertainment, not facts.

[On a vaguely related note, and since I've been dying to use it, as George Will (one of my intellectual heroes) recently quipped, "Congress is more theatrical than actual."] 

However,

Even though there's a string-pulling, greedy, blood-thirsty, man behind the curtain whose very voice is menacing we're subjected to frequent soliloquies by all sorts of disparate characters with one thing in common.

It's America's fault they're terrorists/traitors/dictators/alcoholics/etceterolics -- and also why they don't get to spend enough time with their kids (who live with their exes) and/or their current snifficant others and why they have to lie to them about pretty much everything.

Curiously, China and China's Emperor Xi's goals of becoming the world's loan shark and friend to dick-taters everywhere never comes up.


Finally, and perhaps most importantly, season two features the amazing Walton Goggins -- the coolest, most talented Academy Award-winning, Emmy nominated, producer and businessman you've probably never heard of -- gamely doing his best to heat up a tepid drama.

"Walton Goggins makes a habit of being the best thing about the television shows he's in." -Mike Hale, critic for the New York Times 

Instead of a Justified spin-off built around Mr. Goggins' character, the unforgettable Boyd Crowder, Hollywood's stuffed hin into this turkey.

Poppa loves you.
Have an OK day. 

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©2019 Mark Mehlmauer As long as you agree to supply my name, (Mark Mehlmauer), the title of my website (The Flyoverland Crank), and the URL (Creative Commons license at the top and bottom of the website), you may republish this anywhere that you please. Light editing that doesn't alter the content is acceptable. You don't have to include any of the folderol before the greeting or after the closing (Have an OK day) except for the title.