Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Monday, April 30, 2018

Double Standard Much?


Aww, did widdle Donnie Diaperpants get his widdle feelings hurt by a big, mean comedian?
Michelle Wolf, you go, girl!
















































































Sunday, April 29, 2018

Buster's Mexican Getaway


Buster and the lovely Mrs. Gammons have just returned from another trip to Cozumel.  We enjoyed wonderful warm weather and mass quantities of food and drink.  I read a couple good books.  Friends Val & Kim and Art & Stevie joined us there, plus we made acquaintances with some other good folks, Tim & Jen and Dan & Tammy.  We all had a great time.


"Back off, Yam-Face!"
Buster's Border Patrol.  As on my last visit, I again volunteered for the Mexican army and joined a border security unit protecting the country against invasion from the Orange Menace to the north.  It was my pleasure to serve.




Eats bananas, oranges and fingers
Day of the Iguana, Night of the Emergency Room.  As previously mentioned on Facebook, down there the house "pet" is a 5-foot iguana named Pancho who lives in a palm tree beside the pool and boldly roams the grounds.  He's fond of bananas and oranges from the pool bar and happily gobbles up pieces left for him around the pool deck.  One afternoon, a young, foolish and inebriated turista decide he would hand-feed Pancho like he was a baby goat at the petting zoo.  He stuck a bit of banana in Pancho's face and the lizard promptly bit the shit out of the guy's finger.  Nasty cut, lots of blood, followed by medical attention, "I-am-a-dumbass" waiver forms, and a trip to the ER.  Always remember:  Do not put your hand in the dinosaur's mouth.


Fan Boys.  As in "fanatic," "zealot," or "maniac."  There are all kinds.  Here are a few we observed:

A man in head-to-toe Louisiana State University regalia -- LSU tee-shirt, LSU swim trunks, LSU cap, LSU sunglasses, LSU sunglasses neck strap, LSU crocs, LSU backpack, and LSU towel.  He looked like a Barney-in-paradise purple nightmare.

An aging rock 'n' roll Santa -- long white pony-tailed hair, long white beard, with old Brit-rock tattoos.  He had the Rolling Stones logo inked on his lower legs.  He had the Beatles logo tattooed on each shoulder, and emblazoned across his upper back, he wore the titles to a dozen random Beatles songs.  Rock on, Gramps!






Pence pal.  Overheard a fellow from Indiana assert that Trump "always knew" that he would not complete his first term in office, and that was part of his plan in selecting Mike Pence as V.P. -- so he could hand off the presidency to Pence the Pious when the time came.  The same guy also declared that what he liked best about Pence was that "he's strong on guns."  (He's also strong on homophobia, Bible thumping, and self-righteous moralizing.)



Gays for Trump.  Met a nice gay couple from New York.  One of them sheepishly admitted that he had voted for Frito Corleone.  (His husband/partner did not.)  Why, we asked?  Why in the world would a gay man ever knowingly vote for such an obvious bigot?  What the hell were you thinking?  "I thought he'd be good for my portfolio," he replied.  Huh?  As opposed to who?  George W. Bush?  Herbert Hoover?  News flash, fan boy --  Presidents have virtually no influence on the performance of your investments.  And don't you care about anything else?


(I wonder if the gun-nut Hoosier conservative knew he was sharing a pool with some gay guys.  Where's Mike Pence when you really need him?)


These are my chairs and umbrella.
Find your own.
Space Invaders.  They're everywhere.  The early bird gets the worm, and the early worm gets the deck chairs with the umbrella.  And I am that worm.  I made sure I was up early enough each morning to stake out my territory and snag two chairs underneath an umbrella.  Returning to my spot one day, I found it cramped cheek-by-jowl by space invaders.  It was Rock 'n' Roll Grandpa and his entire pallid family.  "Let me move my chair over," I said "and give you a bit more room."  Grandma then had the gall to ask if they could also have the umbrella!  Seriously?  How about NO!!

Dumb and Dumber.  That's what we called a pair of yahoos from Iowa who behaved as though they'd never been out of the house before.  They were eagerly over-excited about everything, and expressed their first-day amazement at maximum volume:  "TEQUILA!"  "WATERSLIDES!"  "CANNONBALL!"  (With a 4-foot pool depth, not a good idea.)  Both had wives/girlfirends who were too embarrassed to be seen with them.  Happily, after their initial revelry, Dumb and Dumber were massively hung over and sun-burnt to a crisp, and so kept a lower, quieter profile.


All things considered, it was a wonderful, relaxing vacation and a welcome time out of mind -- a Mexican mind-wipe.  But now the pampering is over and it's back to our American reality -- a corrupt, Twitter-ranting fake president surrounded by incompetent nincompoops and protected by Faux News and the invertebrate GOP.

Someone bring me a cerveza!




   

Sunday, April 15, 2018

'Tis The Season


It's primary season, and here in central Ohio the heavy ad buys are from Republican candidates trying to out-conservatard each other.  The one below may be the worst.  State Rep. Larry Householder is a former speaker of the Ohio House who left office in 2004 while under investigation for ethics violations related to political fundraising and kickbacks.  He reclaimed his old seat in 2017 and is up to his slippery old tricks, raising boatloads of money, twisting arms and angling to be House speaker once again.  He's the same power-hungry snake he's always been.

Householder's vile ad kisses Trump's ass and pushes all the deplorables reliable hot buttons:  guns, god, heartbeats, and a big, stiff conservative dick.

Does Householder hold a valid license to hunt old TV sets?  Do you really need to wear a camo-costume to bag a Magnavox?

Thankfully, he's not my rep, and although the GOP has a gerrymandered stranglehold on the Ohio legislature and Householder will be reelected easily, I hope he won't be the next speaker.  Let him stick to his guns, especially if he sticks 'em where the sun don't shine! 



Counterpoint?

Cartoons: Mike Lester for April 13, 2018

(For the record, I enjoy a good steak from time to time.)


Saturday, April 14, 2018

Puppy In A Cup


Military Tactics



















America:  Founded by geniuses, currently run by idiots.

Another Week With Dysfunctional Don


This orange-tufted shit-gibbon sure can fling his feces!  He and his cohorts had a busy week.

We'll begin with one of his admirers, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevins (R).  Bevins is an outrageous asshole and a true Trumpanzee.  His legislature passed a new state budget which included higher pay for teachers and more education funding.  Bevins vetoed the whole thing on Wednesday.  On Friday, with teachers rallying in Frankfort and many schools closed for the day, the legislature over-rode his veto and restored the funding.  Teachers win!  Bevins went all Trump-style pissy:  He complained that the teachers at the statehouse were "hangin' out, shoes off, smokin',leavin' trash around, takin' the day off."  He claimed "for a fact hundreds of thousands" of children were left home alone on Friday and were being "harmed physically and sexually, ingesting poison, and being exposed to drugs."  OMG!  Did he really say that protesting teachers caused kids to be poisoned and sexually molested?  Yes, he did.  C'mon, Kentucky!  Get rid of this fuck-wit.

Former FBI Director James Comey's memoir came out.  In the book, Comey is highly critical of Trump, calling him "unethical," "untethered to the truth," and "a mob boss."  Well said!  Trump reacted with a typical Twitter tirade, slamming Comey as "weak," a "LEAKER & LIAR," "an untruthful slimeball" who "botched" the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.  He tweeted it was his "great honor to fire Comey."  Sarah Sanders responded to reporters questions about Comey's book by reciting a lengthy prepared harangue on "the blatant lies of a self-admitted leaker" whose book was "a poorly executed PR stunt" which belonged "in the bargain basement bin."  Neither Trump nor Sanders would acknowledge that Comey's decision to make public the FBI's Hillary email probe -- just days before the election -- was helpful to Trump, as was Comey's decision to not disclose the FBI's simultaneous investigation into Trump's Russian entanglements.  (Wow!  Constantly discrediting the FBI sure is a lot of work for the Trumpenstein adminstration!)

The DOJ's Inspector General (is there really any justice in Trump's Justice Dept.?) finally released its report faulting former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for "lack of candor" for leaking unauthorized info on the Hillary investigation to a news reporter.  This report was the basis for Trump's firing of McCabe last month, just two days before his scheduled retirement.  McCabe disputes the report, says he in fact had the authority, and says Trump is going to war with the FBI over the Russia probe.  For his part, Trump tweet-crowed that McCabe "LIED! LIED! LIED!" and called the FBI a "den of thieves and lowlifes!"  (When the world's foremost liar so adamantly proclaims that someone else is a liar, one might reasonably presume that person is telling the truth.)

On the subject of leakers and liars, Trump showed flagrant hypocrisy by pardoning Scooter Libby, former Dick Cheney staffer at the White House.  Libby was convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice, i.e. lying and leaking.  He spitefully and dangerously leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent, then lied about it under oath.  He was fined $250,000 and sentenced to 30 months in jail.  "I don't know Mr. Libby," Trump said yesterday, "but for years I have heard on Fox News that he has been treated unfairly.  So I've done what Sean Hannity said to do."  (Dubya commuted his sentence and Libby never spent a day in jail.  How unfair!)  Trump's pardon is a thinly-veiled signal to Manafort, Cohen and others that their crimes will be forgiven.

Speaking of Michael Cohen, he's in deep shit.  The loyal fixer knows all of Trump's unsavory secrets.  With all the damning evidence now in Robert Mueller's possession after the search warrant/raid, that loyalty will be sorely tested.  Will Cohen clam up or tumble?

This week a former doorman at Trump Tower alleged that the National Enquirer paid $30,000 for his story of how Trump fathered an out-of-wedlock child with his housekeeper.  The Enquirer, a vulgar fake-news tabloid owned by Trump pal David Pecker (what an hilariously appropriate surname!), never ran the story, a tactic known as "catch and kill."  We already know about $130,000 from Cohen to Stormy Daniels and $150,000 from the Enquirer to Playmate Karen McDougal (another catch and kill).  And we know of at least 20 women accusing Trump of sexual assault/harassment.  Just imagine how many we don't know about!  It's quite clear that Trump has led the libertine life of a serial sperm donor, an army of lawyers with checkbooks following in his wake, trying to clean up his messes. 

So, up to his ass in domestic troubles, Trump deflected and ordered his annual April bombing of Syria as punishment for killing its own citizens the wrong way.  Assad has killed over 4000,000 Syrians in his civil war, almost all via conventional weapons.  Apparently, being blown to bits by a bomb is OK, but being asphyxiated or poisoned is not.  (Yes, Buster supports the international ban on chemical weapons.  Of course.  I merely point out the awful double standard.)  Trump's "nice and new and smart" bombing demonstration will change exactly nothing in Syria.

One last ludicrous Trumpian tidbit.  A 13 year-old from Parkland, Florida, traumatized by the massacre at MSD High School, sent an email to Trump at www.whitehouse.gov asking him to "do something" to "start making gun laws" for safety's sake.  The White House emailed him back with Trump vowing to keep up the fight for "the right to keep and bear arms."  (LMAO!  These dipshits can't even pick the right pre-fab response.)
______________________________________

Obviously, Trump has many things to hide and will stop at nothing to keep them hidden.  He's a criminally unfit fraud as president, and is unforgivably defective as a human being.  He's gotta go.

Or as a regular reader in Michigan would put it, "Mid-terms, asshole!"




Thursday, April 12, 2018

The Boy Who Read Ayn Rand (And Swallowed It Whole)


Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis) has announced he will not seek reelection in November.  Good riddance! 

His replacement will be no better, but with any luck, McCarthy/Scalise/whoever will be the minority leader, not the speaker.

Paul Ryan spent his 19 years in Congress living on a sort of libertarian Fantasy Island.  The die was cast for him in high school, when he read a work of dystopian fiction, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  The impressionable young Ryan was mesmerized by Rand's "hero," the greed-is-good, selfish, ubermensch John Galt.  Ryan credited the book as the reason he got into politics, and made it required reading for his staff.  Required reading!  WTF?

Most of us grow out of any youthful libertarian flirtation, but Ryan never did.  Somehow, he became the GOP's favorite budget wonk, a supposed genius working to rein in debt and spending.  In reality, he was a trickle-down/supply-side dupe whose idea of "individualism" was killing Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Obamacare.  Thankfully, he failed in all those efforts.

His lone "accomplishment" was the Trump tax giveaway, which gave huge tax cuts to big business and wealthy individuals while ballooning the deficit and national debt by at least $2 trillion.  So much for the great budget hawk.     

In addition to giving rich people more money, Ryan is a moralistic opponent of abortion rights and a  champion of the NRA.  As Speaker, he allowed the reprehensible Devin Nunes to exist and he's been a gutless Trump enabler.

In these pages, I've referred to Paul Ryan, variously, as Paulie Smallnuts, the Rat-Faced Boy, Hatchet Face, and the Grandma Killer.  I was too kind.  He leaves a legacy as toady to the One Percent, and full-of-shit Ayn Rand acolyte to everyone else.

Go home and eat cheese, Paulie!  GTFO!

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

When Your Lawyer Needs A Lawyer, It's Not Good


Frito Corleone is beside himself with anger because the FBI got a search warrant and removed material from the office, home, and hotel suite of Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer.  The Deplorable Don immediately vented his spleen with copious amounts of Grade A bullshit lies, on camera and on Twitter.  He called it a disgrace.  Cohen's attorney called the use of a search warrant unnecessary.

To briefly correct the record, it was not technically a raid, they did not break in, attorney-client privilege is not dead, it was not an attack on our country, it's not a witch hunt, and it was completely fair -- it was search warrant approved at multiple levels (by Republicans!) and executed legally.  The disgrace is our fake president.  And a search warrant was necessary because without it, it's just a request for records and Cohen would claim client privilege on everything and would turn over nothing.

To successfully obtain a search warrant on a lawyer -- any lawyer -- is not easy.  It's kind of a big deal.

When it's a federal warrant and the search of the lawyer's office is conducted by the FBI, it's a bigger deal.

When that lawyer happens to be the personal attorney for the president of the United States, it's a yuuge deal!

And when the president's lawyer needs a lawyer, well, it's just not good at all.  The fixer is in a fix -- up the well-known creek without a paddle.

Some Trumpanzees are complaining that Michael Cohen is being treated "like a mob lawyer."  It's an apt analogy.

Following The President's Advice


























Children Should Be Seen, Not Heard




Mark Hertling is a distinguished lieutenant general, retired from the U.S. Army.

Ivanka "Kremlin Barbie" Trump is a . . . what, exactly?  An athlete?  He-he!  The next time she wants to open her Tweet-hole, she might to check first to see if her daddy has already destroyed her bright idea.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Big, Beautiful Wall of Bullshit


With nothing better to do than try to appease Ann Coulter, fake president Don El Paunch-o is back to doing what he does best -- lying about his "big, beautiful border wall," and calling Mexicans rapists.

The fear-mongering rape claims may poll well with fans of Russian-bot Twitter accounts, but it's utterly unsubstantiated bullshit.  Pendejo!  And his wall will never be built.  (Although his administration insists that repairing/rebuilding a section of existing wall "counts" as new Trump wall.)

Illegal border crossings are at a 46-year low, net immigration from Mexico is zero, and if you're worried about drugs, remember the law of supply and demand.  The U.S. generates the demand.  Change our drug laws, change the demand.

A border wall is a medieval response to modern conditions -- a stupid idea for stupid people.  What's next?  Catapults and flaming arrows?

Walls are ineffective.  Where there's a will, there's a way.  Climbing over them is an obvious approach.  Going around them or under them are also workable options.  I'm reminded of the old Southern Cal football play, the sweep around one end or the other -- "Student Body Left," "Student Body Right."   The Mexicans could run "Ocean Left" or "Ocean Right."  And there's also the ever-popular "El Chapo Tunnel-rooskie" play.



























































Until his dream-wall is completed (which will be never), Trumpolini says he'll call out the National Guard and will station 2000 to 4000 Guardsmen along the border.  The U.S.-Mexican border is approximately 2000 miles long.  And every half-mile to mile, Cheeto Benito will place one solitary weekend warrior, and let him fry in the sun forever.  Yeah, that'll work!   He-he.



Mexico Will Pay For This

MEXICO CITY (The Borowitz Report)—Hoping to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict over immigration, Mexico surprised the world on Thursday by agreeing to pay for Donald J. Trump’s psychiatric care.

While some Mexican taxpayers argued that a full course of psychiatric treatment could prove more costly than a border wall, President Peña Nieto warned against skimping on such a necessary expense.

“When the safety and security of the world is at stake, eight hundred dollars an hour is a bargain,” he said, but added that Mexico would try to find a therapist who takes insurance.




Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Remembering MLK and His Uncle


Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by an assassin's bullet.  It was a tragic, sad event in a tumultuous year.  I was 13 years old.

As we mark the anniversary, let's remember King's historic significance as a fearless truth-teller and a force for good, instrumental in compelling our society to move forward.  Let's remember his commitment to peace and justice.  Let's applaud the progress which has occurred and acknowledge that, half a century later, there is still so much more to be done.

And let's shamefully recognize that we have a blatant racist in the White House, a humiliating fact which dishonors Dr. King and his legacy.  (We can rectify that error this November and again in 2020.)
________________________________________

I'll share a related remembrance which recently percolated to the surface of my memory banks.  (I wonder if my sister recalls this.)

Martin Luther King Jr.'s uncle Joel lived and worked in Mansfield, Ohio, my home town.  The Rev. Joel L. King Sr. was Martin Sr.'s brother, and like his brother and his nephew, a preacher.  Joel King was the long-time pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist, a small black church.  I don't know how he wound up in Mansfield.

From the weekly church directory
I never met this Rev. King, but I saw his photo every Saturday in my local newspaper.  This was back in the day when most newspapers ran a weekly directory of churches, with each listing essentially a small advertisement.  It was common knowledge that Pastor Joel was MLK's uncle, and although he was there for many of his nephew's speeches and marches, he stayed in the background, and when back in Mansfield didn't trumpet his family connection.

News Journal, November 21, 1970
That always puzzled me.  If I'd have been him, my church directory listing would've fairly screamed, "Hey man!  I'm Martin Luther King's uncle!  Come and hear me speak!"  But he never used MLK that way.  Probably felt such self-promotion was undignified.

Rev. Joel L. King Sr. died in Mansfield in 1996 at age 81.  His son, Rev. Joel L. King Jr., lives in Gahanna on the east side of Columbus, and is vice chairman of the Ohio MLK Commission.



Tuesday, April 3, 2018

The Answer Is Yes


The question:  Is Dinky Digits Don ignorant, or lying, or merely regurgitating what Steve Doocy said on Fox & Friends?

Yes.  All of the above.

Our Cartoon President is once more dispensing peevish anti-immigrant provocations.  His execrable base is reportedly pissed off about the lack of funding for a "big, beautiful wall" in his budget (Mexico is not paying), so Trumpistopheles is throwing them some red hate-meat by bashing DACA.  The fact that he's utterly full of shit doesn't seem to bother them or the Banana Republicans in Congress.

  • Democrats didn't end DACA protections, Trump did with his executive order.  And if he really cared about those 800,000 kids, he could reinstate the program as easily as he scuttled it -- with the chipmunk-on-crack stroke of his tiny pen.  
  • "Caravans" in Mexico are not bum-rushing the border to invade the U.S.  It's an annual Easter-time psuedo-religious protest of the plight of Central American refugees/migrants.  It's been happening for the past 5 years.  They are not trying to enter the U.S. illegally.
  • Even if they did manage to sneak into the U.S., they couldn't possibly "take advantage of DACA."  They'd be ineligible, late by a good 11 years.  (Those proteced by DACA had to have lived here continuously since 2007 and arrived prior to age 16.)


Stay strong, friends, and do not lose your sense of outrage at the daily degradations dealt us us by Donnie Dipstick, fraud president.