Dark Money (Short Story) - 9/28/2021 9:01:03 AM
I doubt if David's recent death will change anything. What will change is overturning Citizens United that was actually a loophole for billionaires and corporations to influence elections and causes with money that couldn't be traced and could only be called, "dark."
In 1981, my newlywed wife and I were renting a small condo in Houston when we were visited by a multimillionaire from our hometown, Elmer Frey, permanently immortalized in the Motorhome Hall of Fame. My wife and his two daughters, one who became a flower child and despised everything her father was, including adopting a black boy, were childhood friends. Why he stopped to visit us while traveling and campaigning in semi retirement.
Elmer and some brothers started a mobile home factory on their farm and became rich and famous. His invention of mounting a mobile home over a precipice on steel beams allowing it to be able to occupy land that couldn't be built upon and give a tremendous view out of any window, was featured on the cover of Life Magazine.
During his brief visit in the evening before he went with his wife to spend the night in their motorhome in the parking lot, saving money, he wanted to tell me about what he believed in. He told me that his motorhome could easily be converted into a parade vehicle for rallies and parades for the John Birch Society. I knew that Carnation, the company that offered my father management jobs in Michigan and California during World War II that he didn't take, and Welch's Grape Juice, were ultraconservative companies behind the John Birch Society.
And then, Elmer showed me a small pamphlet describing in almost, grade school terms, what the Triumvirate (Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and someone else) communist conspiracy and the illuminati. A kind of junk political philosophy I had no reason to believe.
But as time wore on, I realized what kind of hold the fossil fuel, military-industrial complex, and landowning corporations, had on our government by their bribing of political representatives. Offers they couldn't refuse.
Ron
3 pillars (Short Story) - 9/22/2021 11:27:48 AM
For some strange reason, I've known this for a long time. Through all the years that I was single and cooking for myself, I made sure that I ate a balanced diet except when eating fast food on the run or sometimes in cafeterias where they tended to use a lot of processed ingredients.
Because of my paralysis and lactose intolerance, sticking to the basics, buying food in its original state and then cooking it or eating it raw in the case of vegetables like carrots, celery and radishes. I dabbled in the new products, remembering introducing fellow doctoral students and professors to a new product called Pringles, but I never liked them very much for a snack and as my primary snack popped my own popcorn in cholesterol reducing cottonseed oil and never added any butter.
I stayed skinny as a rail and quite healthy until recently when my chief cook and partner began introducing some of these products hidden in baked goods, etc. back into my diet that I tried to resist to little avail.
Thanks, Steve, for bringing this excellent book to the attention of obese Americans who are so indoctrinated by convenience foods that they have a hard time overcoming their addictions.
Ron
Proof of Collusion (Short Story) - 9/22/2021 11:10:25 AM
Since I probably won't get around to reading the book, I'm grateful that you have and have provided us with this very thorough review of what the book has revealed.
I always viewed the Donald as some kind of spoiled rich kid who tended to pout if he didn't get his way. I watched all 10 seasons of The Apprentice, and became more disgusted with his behavior on that show as time went on. But apparently, that television show with its "firing" mentality resonated with so many dissatisfied Republicans who loved to hear him cater to them with lies appropriate to their local thinking. Like telling West Virginians that he was going to "bring coal mining jobs back" from the dead.
I hope that evidence displayed in this book and those in Bob Woodward's latest reveal, Peril, lead to his conviction for real crimes against both United States and humanity.
Ron
