The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

All you tech-savvy readers out there probably are way ahead of me on this, but I just read than now clothes are being digitized. Sports bras with heart rate monitors, Levi jackets with connectivity to music devices, yoga pants with tingle activators to correct posture. The entire fashion industry may soon be wired. This is great news for androids maybe … and those of us who apparently (apparelly?) want to emulate replicants.

Not that there aren’t obvious benefits to us homo sapiens. Underwear that delivers electric shocks after not being changed regularly. Pants that can zip themselves up. Or lock down in sexual harassment office situations and if need be deliver additional electric shocks. Self-cleaning handkerchiefs! Programmable shirts that change color with your mood. (Remember those mood rings — way ahead of their time!)

Pardon me if I don’t share the same level of excitement as my Zumba-spandexed wired-in-the-crotch fellow South Enders following the fashion trends of Silicone Valley. Although, I remember when Wisconsin deer hunters and Green Bay Packer fans delighted to battery warmed socks. No doubt the circuitry of today’s woolen hosiery would make those early prototypes look clunky and quaint. And who knows how many lives were lost to electrocution than toes to frostbite.

Personally I don’t want my clothes to be too smart. Almost everything around me now is ‘smart’, wirelessly scanning the internet for further updates, leaving me so far behind I probably show as a ghost on GPS. The last thing I need in this digitized interconnected society is my hat telling me what to do, where to go, how to better accessorize. A hat, I hope, is just a hat. And if, as some say, it makes the man, let’s leave it at that. I sure don’t want it giving me instructions, shocks or directions, just keep the rain off my empty head.

I’ve always wondered how the evangelical voters could ever support a guy like Donald J. who admitted, on camera no less, to groping women. Does the whole Man is the Head of the Household thing work to justify whatever us guys want to do with our women? Never mind that there are laws against this sort of sexual assault. Never mind that we’re watching a herd of harassers dragged into the police line-ups for all of us to identify. I might understand if they confessed and asked for some Christian forgiveness. But not too many do and most just point an accusatory finger at their own accusers, calling them liars and political operatives.

Judge Roy Moore definitely is my poster boy for this sort of malfeasance. He’s an avowed firebrand of a Christian, a family values sort of guy, impeccable evangelical credentials, a man who fought the Hard Fight against the secular legal establishment to bring the 10 Commandments into the Alabama State Courthouse. Now, of course, he has half a dozen women, once teenagers he hit on when he was in his 30’s and feeling more than his oats, coming forward to tell their sordid stories. The Judge avows how this is nothing more than a political hatchet job. Why didn’t they press charges back when?

Times change, Judge. Ask Anita Hill. She brought her case to the white men on the Judiciary Committee about to rule on Clarence Thomas’ fitness for the Supreme Court. And she got browbeaten on a national stage pretty handily. You want to take a turn in the docket next? Not me. And not most women who could easily imagine their careers ruined, their co-workers turned hostile, their notoriety smeared with mud and blood.

Well, times do change. The Judge declared that these spurious accusations were nothing less than an attack on his character. No kidding? I guess that’s why they made you a judge. But Roy, this isn’t the 20th Century anymore, or in your case, the 19th. No, little buddy, this is Now and your Day is over. Even if the fine folks of ‘Bama vote you in as Senator, you’re a Pariah. Look it up, Judge, it’s a biblical expression. And that excuse from some of the evangelicals down there that Joseph and Mary were consenting statutory rapists by today’s standards, see if that holds up in court as a defense.

The President took the opportunity in Viet Nam to ask Putin once again if he’d hacked into our elections a year ago. And once again, Putin told him no, he had not. In fact, he was, according to D.J., pretty miffed that he had to answer that question another time. How many times does he have to tell Trump NO? Geez, whaddaya want, an affidavit?

Stop the Mueller investigation! Why waste more time and money on a wild goose chase now that the President has asked Vlad if he and his fellow Russians played any part in the 2016 elections? Putin says he didn’t and that’s plenty good enough for Donald and me. After all, why would the man lie?

It’s not like he was Papadoupolis or those women who accused Trump of groping them. They certainly can’t be believed. Or FBI Director Comey whose motives are certainly suspect. Or Mueller himself who apparently is on a vendetta of some kind against the entire Trump family and their circle of friends. Okay, their circle of business acquaintances. I mean, if you can’t trust the veracity of a strongman like Putin, who can you trust?

Well, you can’t trust CNN. Or the failing New York Times. Or the Washington Post. PBS is out. So are the rest of those sorry alphabet television news sources. And forget about the lamestream, drive-by media. Other than Breitbart and Fox, they’re all prevaricators and purveyors of attack innuendo. Can’t be trusted, certainly can’t be believed. Faux news. All of it.

If Vlad says they weren’t involved in disseminating negative stories about Clinton, that’s good enough for me. So what if the entire point of the Mueller investigation is to get to the truth? The intelligence community, the FBI, the CIA, all a pack of liars. If they truly wanted to find out the truth, all they had to do was ask Putin. Yes or no, Vlad? Yes or no.

Well, the answer, earth to Bob Mueller!, is no. Simple as that. Shut down the investigation and let’s move on to something more substantial. You know, like bringing back those coal jobs. Getting some tax breaks for the Job Creators and real estate developers. And getting that Trump Tower built in downtown Moscow.

Pity the poor men! Every day some sad schnook who was riding high on ego and money and power, gets dragged down into the mob of angry women ready to have at his sorry manhood with sharp tongues and sharper fingernails. One day it’s that creepy monster Weinstein or Winestain or whoever, the prototypical casting couch perv who not only seduces young wannabee actresses but threatens the established ones with smear campaigns that undoubtedly would ruin careers. Hugh Hefner died last month and boy howdy, that signaled the end of an era of boys having their way with girls.

Hef surrounded himself with a bevy of young talent, lounged lasciviously in his black satin pajamas and thought he’d discovered a New World of permissive sex and exploitation. Guess he missed the Roman Empire. Power brings many rewards, but as the boys at the Pilot Lounge like to say, money talks and bullshit walks. For all our lives the frat boys and the fat cats have had their way with their female counterparts. Women’s Lib opened some doors, but behind a lot of them, they still encountered the predatory male, the guy who can’t translate NO and doesn’t expect rejection, not from some pretty little underling.

Every day now another rogue molester finds his accusers shaking fists and talking to the press. Movie actors, congressmen, judges, professors, you name it, the spotlight is veering this way and that. Poor Judge Roy Moore, newly off his campaign win for GOP Senatorial nominee of the great state of Alabama, is being accused of groping a 14 year old girl. Even in Alabama this is considered beyond the usual pale, they don’t care if he WAS the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and fought valiantly for bringing the 10 Commandments into the courthouse. (Well, 9 Commandments if you throw in the prohibition against sex with someone other than your wife.)

Even Jesus’ old man Joseph was called out by the Alabama state auditor, purportedly in defense of Judge Moore, for being an adult dating Mary, an underage teen at the time. The auditor, apparently felt that what was okay for the parents of the Son of God was certainly good enough for the beleaguered Judge. My own take is that they should be glad the statute of limitations is a couple thousand years past due date. But not for the Judge.

#MeToo is a train that’s barely left the station and already the bodies are piling up under the cowcatcher. The chatter at the morning breakfasts in the South End Diner is way less vociferous, almost whispers now. It’s as if we can nearly hear the testosterone drying fast in the hot winds of this new climate. Who knows who’ll be missing next week? Who among the assembled caffeinated is without sin? Who can say where the next finger points.

Danny the Dagger, our geriatric playboy of days long past, maybe summed it up best. “If those people thought they were safe after Trump admitted groping women then got elected anyway, they better hope they own a few very tall Towers and half a dozen golf courses too. My money’s on the women now. Trump better climb to the top of his own damn Tower and bolt the doors, they’ll be coming for him too. God help us all.”

Ya know, like a lot of Americans slowly slipping out of the so-called middle class into Hard Times, I too feel a patriotic duty to shore up the wealthier citizens’ place in our society. Not just the individual taxpayer, but the corporate entities the Supreme Court has declared as persons with the same rights as you and me. So when I see the tax plan rolling out that will drop their bracket from 35 to 20%, I feel confident these proud Americans will pour those increased profits back to the working sector and I’m more than happy to wait for the trickle down.

My Republican legislators, working hard for their constituencies in the red states, assure us the economy will ratchet up with these corporate tax breaks. Sure, there’ll be major deficits, but trust them, the zooming economy will take care of those. Better corporate rates will bring companies back to the Land of the Free, you wait and see.

The Paradise Papers are out now, a blow-up snapshot of how the beleaguered corporate taxpayer has been forced to seek shelter in off-shore accounts. Apple dumped billions into the tiny island of Jersey. Jersey doesn’t tax them at all, but I’m sure the GOP will offer further incentives to bring that money back to our disappearing shores. 15% seems good on its face, but maybe that’s still 20% more than Jersey. If we have to compete, well, I think the rest of us taxpayers who will benefit from a roaring economy will have to sacrifice short term to achieve gains long term. Corporate Patriotism is going to be the New Patriotism, I get that.

And I’m okay with cutting into Medicaid and welfare. You won’t need those anyway in a booming economy driven by Amazon and Google and Microsoft and Exxon and Apple. Sure, we could have cut out some deductions for them and not us, but, well, you see the point. Don’t handcuff the job creators, you’re only hurting yourselves.

And yeah, I know you’re going to say these fat cats have been avoiding taxes all along. 35%? Ha, they haven’t paid 35% at all, you’re thinking, and you’d be 100% right. But you’re missing the Big Profit. Big Picture, I mean. Same difference. If our corporations, our semi-U.S. corporations are allowed to compete completely unfettered by undue regulations and burdensome taxes, they’ll hire more of us, get it? And if we have to keep our wages slightly low, maybe even lower the minimum wage if necessary, that’s how you compete with Malaysia, Mexico and Slumbekistan. Is this hard to understand???

We should be grateful is all I’m saying. Pretty soon Amazon and their brethren will be moving into 21st Century automation. Robots don’t get paid and they sure don’t pay taxes. Throw the dice and put some trust into our Ayn Randian future. Spare the rich and the life you save might just be your own.