Note…Connie…ya know, Neil’s sweetie and the center of his universe and happiness…disavows responsibility for this post and thinks it shouldn’t be on the blog at all…but like Randy Cassingham from thisistrue.com…stupidity and obliviots should be pointed out regardless of race, creed, political party, gender, or any of the other categorization words you feel like adding to this list. I thought about having a separate section of the blog called “Bad Neil” but then that would be stealing an idea from Nick Russell of gypsyjournal.com fame. That rat also has a section called Nick Happens…so I can’t use that one either…and I couldn’t think of a better one. If you’ve got one…please let me know in the comments and I’ll make up a new section for posts that well…ya know who I’m talkin’ about…thinks are off topic.

The original idea for this post was to offer a few samples of people…mostly politicians…being stupid as seen on recent news. I even was going to be non-partisan about it since both of our parties are worthy contributors. I was even going to include foreign politicians…and even for extra credit some foreign non-politicians. The reason for the post about other than Fun Stuff© is the same as last time…there ain’t been any Fun Stuff© to write about.

However…I ran into a problem in that there were sooooo many potential contributions in the past week or so that this post would have read like War and Peace…heck…the socialist Ocrazyio-Cortez from the Bronx had 3 potential entries just on her own. So I decided to just pick one…and since we used to be residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia decided they would be the winners this week.

As you’re probably seen on the news…the Caucasian Governor and Caucasian Attorney General of VA are Democrats and both allegedly appeared in blackface back during their college days. The Lieutenant Governor is an African American Democrat…and he’s been accused by two separate women of either sexual abuse in one case or rape in the second case. As it happens…these are the first two in line for becoming the governor under the VA constitution succession rules…and the third guy in line is the Speaker of the House in VA. This guy happens to be a Caucasian Republican…and in a strange twist he’s only the Speaker  by virtue of a coin toss after the last election. Seems there was one house seat that was tied after all the mandatory recounts…and under VA law it’s decided by a coin toss. This duly occurred, the Republican for that seat was certified as the winner…and hence the VA House has a Republican majority and hence a Republican Speaker.

Before we get too far into the weeds though…I need to comment on the issue of blackface…which has been declared by the NAACP and numerous Democratic presidential candidates in the past week…to be universally and inherently racist. I think that there’s a problem with this though…while in the politically correctness times of 2019 it’s generally recognized as racist…was it really racist back then? Like a lot of things that aren’t acceptable now…there is plenty of historical precedent about things and situations that…back at the time when the precedent was “current events” were either legal, acceptable, risqué and frowned upon…or some combination of the above.

For example…slavery for instance…was legal up until the constitution was amended to make it illegal. Slavery…although primarily practiced in the “racist South” since cotton plantations needed cheap labor…was aided and abetted by primarily New England shipping companies and ship captains that journeyed…for profit mind you, nobody forced them to do so…to Africa to engage in the buying and selling of slaves. The KKK was invented by the Democratic Party…and it was the Republican Party (some President named Abe something-or-other) that was responsible for the abolition of slavery. Abroad…apartheid was the law of the land in the country of South Africa for generations before it became illegal. Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was a convicted, sentenced to hang by the neck until dead murderer before he because the champion of black majority rule in South Africa. Nobel Peace Prize winner Menachem Begin was…back before he was Prime Minister of Israel…an admitted terrorist who participated in the violent takeover of the land that became Israel after the British pulled out. Robert Byrd was an admitted member of the KKK. He also participated in a Democratic Party led filibuster in 1964 against the Civil Rights Act. Franklin Roosevelt ordered the mass and arbitrary incarceration of US citizens of Japanese ancestry during World World II. Women could not vote until the constitution was amended to make that legal.

I could go on and on with examples…and I’m not implying that the folks in the above paragraph were good or bad…just that as a matter of historical record things that are now unacceptable in 2019 were perfectly acceptable back then. And while I personally have never appeared in blackface…I’m a bear after all and we don’t wear makeup…back in the day there were situations where it wasn’t considered out of line…like say you were participating in a Michael Jackson lookalike contest. 

Just sayin’. So the whole notion of blackface…or anything else that is dug up about a politician of either party from 30 years ago…needs to be considered both in the prevailing morals of the time for lack of a better word as well as considering that maybe anything you said or did in college that wasn’t illegal you might deserve a pass for and let’s look at your adult behavior and your political life behavior instead.

So…back to the Commonwealth of VA and their current governing crisis where this all started.

The governor may…or may not depending on which press release you believe…have put a picture on his yearbook page of himself in blackface. I can’t believe that we haven’t seen a complete facial recognition analysis of the photo yet with definitive proof…or non proof and then all the subsequent arguments about the definition of proof…whether the picture in question is him. He now says it’s not…but that he did wear blackface for a Michael Jackson lookalike contest.

The lieutenant governor…well, he’s been accused of sexual assault and rape by two different women…and at least one of them told her friends at the time that it happened…and their friends say they were informed back then. However…there’s no video, there’s no police report, there’s no rape kit so at this point there’s relatively little actual evidence that he did or did not do this.

The attorney general has likewise appeared in blackface and admitted it publicly.

The speaker of the house is a Republican elected basically because of a coin toss and he’s next in line for the governor after the LG and AG.

The Democratic Party…well they’re in a pickle over this. Numerous presidential candidates demanded the governor resign as his “transgression” was the first of the three to be publicly known…however they quit talking about that when it turned out that the LG and AG might also have to resign and that would make the governor a Republican instead of a Democrat.

The LG is now being defended by various other Democrats…with words like “there’s no proof” and “it’s he said she said”. Ya know…the same stuff that back during the Kavanaugh hearings they were all about “you must always believe the woman” and now they’re saying the opposite.

So what should happen in VA? I suggest that they all take a deep breath…or maybe several of them…and demonstrate a little common sense.

The governor should not resign in my opinion…what he did was (a) somewhat acceptable back then and (b) he was a dumb college student anyway. If what you did as a college student…or even a young adult…counted against you then both Connie and Neil…as well as just about every other person over the age of 25…would be in trouble.

The LG should be investigated…but absent any actual evidence that he committed these crimes he should not resign either. I said this same thing back during the Kavanaugh hearings…although to be fair these two accusers have somewhat greater credibility since they (a) told people about it back then even though no police report was filed and (b) they’re not political activists from the other party who might be trying to derail a career.

The AG…same as the governor…who cares. Has he been racist as an adult or politician? If not then let’s forgive what may…or may not as I don’t know all the circumstances but none of the media pundits do either…have been a bad idea.

This whole controversy…just like the one over Kavanaugh and several other judicial appointees by the President…is just a bunch of sour grapes sour loser bovine end product. Like our previous President said…elections have consequences…the winner gets to do things like appoint judges and serve as governor (or lieutenant governor or attorney general) and demanding a do-over ain’t the way it works in a federated democratic republic like the US of A.

Enough of that nonsense…I might…or might not, who knows…illustrate the other stupidities I found later on…but I will tell ya about the two worst foreign examples I ran across this week.

Over in the UK as you know they’re in the midst of the Brexit brouhaha…and there’s this female economics fellow at Cambridge University who’s against Brexit. She’s certainly entitled to her opinion of course…and as a US citizen whether the UK achieves Brexit or not isn’t anything I have any say in (and relatively little interest in other than the fact that I have always thought that the EU was a doomed concept from the start as the member countries didn’t give up any sovereignty to the central government…therefore they effectively have no central government but just an economic union)…she’s going ‘round giving speeches and appearing on youtube videos railing on about how Brexit is the 2000s version of “the king has no clothes” and it will leave the UK economy naked. The stupid part comes in here though. She gives these speeches with no notes while walking around on the stage…and during the first third or so of the speech slowly takes off her blazer, blouse, skirt, bra, underwear and shoes until she’s naked and then wanders around the stage blathering on. At the end she picks up her clothes and walks off. The really stupid part comes in next though…this week she appeared on a radio show…yeah, I said radio…and that of course means no video…and she still stripped naked in the radio studio. Hello!! Lady…it’s radio, nobody can see your show of defiance or metaphor or whatever you’re trying to do by taking off your clothes.

Then there’s this guy in India…he’s suing his parents for not getting his permission before he was born and forced to exist in the cold cruel world of Indian caste society. At least he’s honest enough to admit that he’ll probably not get a judge to rule in his favor…but he’s still stupid.

OK…what other interesting things did we find on the net this week…

As ya know we had wintergeddon or snowpocalypse or whatever the idiots on the news called it this time last week. All I know about it is that we had no snow down here in SW FL…and that Fred Flintstone was driving down this street.

There was this farmer in the midwest somewhere that applied to build himself a shelter out in the field for his horses to get out of the rain (or snow or whatever, I’m not sure) to whoever had to approve such things in his state or city or county or whatever. That august body saw fit to disapprove his request. Fortunately for him though…there is no such approval required to build himself a table and set of chairs.

This is how you say CVS…with a Bastanh accent.

There’s this cloud on Jupiter that’s shaped like a dolphin…at least if the dolphin was about 10 times larger than the earth is.

And finally…a salute to those who’ve served in our military. Got this from my Ugly Hedgehog forum…which is actually a photographers hangout. They’re a compilation of bumper stickers that were seen on or around military bases.

Cyas.