Keeper of the Clown Bell

I should say right up front that I'm not a Roseanne Barr fan, which is not the same as saying that I hate her because she's a racist Trump supporter, but simply makes the point that I'm not her demographic and have never seen any of her TV shows or comedy acts. I know almost nothing about her and the only memory that I do hold is of her butchering our national anthem at some baseball game in the distant past - like 20 years ago. So getting her show canceled by the ABC Television Network because of some early morning tweet she sent out to the big wide world will have zero impact on my life. However, I am a big fan of "The Planet of the Apes" ( ranked #6 on KOTCB all time great Sci-Fi movies list ) and an even bigger fan of the ingenious French author, Pierre Boulle , who conceived of this dystopian future. And when I hear people calling a reference to "Monkey Planet" racist I simply must spring to the defense of Boulle, Charlton Heston and Franklin J. Sch...

In days gone by the KOTCB blog has outlined 3 fundamental reforms that would, if implemented, improve the US Federal Government (see KOTCB  John Boehner, I give you a standing 0 ) and in their short form they are as follows: Mandatory retirement of ALL Federal employees pegged to the Social Security retirement age. A US Congressmen for every 30,000 citizens Repeal the 17th Amendment If these simple rules were in place then John McCain would have been forced into political retirement (at the Federal level) in 2002, just a few years after loosing his bid to be the GOP nominee in the Y2K presidential race, and preventing the nation from having to endure the last sixteen years (16!!!) of his grumpy "nonconformist" bullshit. I write this as one who supported "the Maverick" in his GOP primary battles with W. and as a person who has long standing personal and familial ties with the Senator from Arizona. The year 2000 Republican primary took something out of Mc...

Told you so. “when I make promises, I keep them.” DJT KOTCB readers know how I feel about the Twitter Wall and DJT's  Trebuchet which he uses to rip gaping holes in this mental fortification. Today I was scrolling the wall looking for news and commentary on the Iranian Nuke deal and saw this mess (which I have taken the liberty of annotating) fill my screen. I do follow David Frum (for laughs see KOTCB Frum-Frum ) and the idiots at Twitter have created an algorithm that suggests I also follow @JRubinBlogger and @SteveSchmidtSES too, so let's take a look at what these deep thinkers have to say before I commit to taking the bate. Children are "separated" from their parents every day in this country when those parents are sent to jail for breaking laws. " Yes, U.S. locks people up at a higher rate than any other country " Nicolle Wallace is an moron. Is Jennifer Rubin really going to lecture people on " loosing composure " ...

Outlaw When it comes to Hip Hop/Rap music I'm old-school because, well, I'm old. I was one of those pale fellows mixing it up with the crowd at Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five shows in '83 and I have a nostalgic soft spot for the more innocent and melodic "songs" from my youth. Please don't think of me as a prude or high minded scold who Rights-off this vibrant and important (in my view) category of music just because I've lived long enough to be there at the beginning and watch the full evolution/devolution of the genre. As far as today's Rap Music scene is concerned I'm neither East Coast or West Cost but align myself with the Dirty South and  truth tellers like T.I. (even if he did have to take it back)  and his  innovative enterprises like Blackstock . I'm down with almost anything out of Hotlanta - Outkast, B.o.B. (I love anyone who believes the earth is flat) and keep going down to  Three 6 Mafia  and still further down to the ...

Readers of the KOTCB blog already know that my admiration for Publius Decius Mus (AKA Michael Anton) couldn't get any higher and I believe his CRB article “ The Flight 93 Election ” and, especially, his " Restatement on Flight 93 ", which is the real money shot but almost never gets the attention afforded its set up, are two of the greatest polemics on the sorry state of American "Conservatism" in my lifetime (See KOTCB  The US Airways Flight 1549 Election (You're perfectly right) and  Decius drops the mic ). But Tuesday's article in the NYTimes " A National Security Aide’s Departing Wish: Cooking for the State Dinner " has elevated Anton, in my view, to demigod status and I think I now understand exactly why his words resonated so deeply in my soul: “I’m a rare thing in Washington conservative circles: a right-wing Francophile,” said Mr. Anton, who first served in the White House during the George W. Bush administration, when the Iraq wa...

It's Springtime here on my little patch of earth and that means the birds are chirping, the bees are flying and snakes are crawling out of their holes to slither around the garden. When it comes to bees, wasps, hornets, yellow-jackets and other stinging insects I zap their nests with highly toxic poison emitted from a spray can with a 15 foot strike range. There's no reason to get up close to these critters (a guy might get stung) and dousing their nest with foaming death rubs off on them and kills them slowly, mercilessly over time - it also sends a powerful message to other bees not to build nests near my home. As a general rule I've got nothing against bees and am perfectly content to let them live in the wild, doing their thing, and wouldn't spend any time romping through the forest looking for trouble or, in even my most ethereal flights of fancy, take it upon myself to change the nature of a bee. But, if there is a project at hand - say, a fence that needs mendi...

Now, at long last, that we're on the brink of war with Russia after pussy-footing around the issue since 1945, it's probably a good time to take a long look at the Russian Collusion accusations leveled against Donald J Trump's campaign for president and the ongoing special council investigation of the same lead by former FBI chief Robert Mueller. It's not that our impending hot war with the Bear isn't more important (IT IS!!!) than an extra-constitutional dirt-dig that started May 17, 2017 (coming up on a year now) but these pressing events force one, long unasked, question to be answered - and I mean answered right now! To get to the question at hand I first want to review what's actually speculated upon in the #FakeNews media and broader commentariat across the fruited plain and that namely is this: That the Russian government installed Donald Trump as President of the United States by "hacking" the US election and that, as a result, Vladimir P...