The plot: Blondie (Clint Eastwood) defeats Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) in a three-way Mexican showdown and then sets his gaze upon Tuco, the last two men standing. After defeating Tuco, and after a faked hanging, and in magnanimous fashion, Blondie splits the stolen money with Tuco (Eli Wallach) and lets him go, in essence he pardons him, as he rides of into the distance. Art imitating life.

Donald Trump's cabinet picks are rolling in like an assembly line. There are shouts of glee and cries of despair echoing across the land as the future settles into the minds of the body politic. Some pundits point fingers, some pound their chests. The nation remains divided, perhaps even more so after the election. There's an eerie calm across the land, for now.

As I see it, there are some Good potentialities among his picks. There is much fat to be rendered from the bloated governmental carcass. That rendering will cause some hurt but really should be done, the behemoth is stuffed like an 86 pound turkey.

The US of A will be none the worse with healthier food and better product regulation. Regulating poisons would also be a huge plus. Health has been neglected for too long in this country for the sake of corporate profit.

I foresee possible Bad consequences looming in the future as well, namely censorship. Consequences that may affect c99 and the internet in toto. In the past Trump had originally voiced opposition to Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996, which will directly affect c99 and myself, which provides immunity to online platforms from civil liability based on third-party content. The former President has gone quiet since his previous opposition to Section 230 after he launched his social media platform, Truth Social.

We shall see, since the Republicans have also shown a desire to censor social media, albeit from a different angle from that of the Democrats.

There are Ugly storm clouds of war building on the horizon as well, as Trump loads his cabinet with hardliners. The European theater may quell, but the specter of the ongoing and troublesome war in the Mideast continues. Let's hope that the recent bluster emanating from certain voices in the incoming cabinet are meant to bring the antagonists to the bargaining table and not a portent of the future.

In this moment in time, I feel like the dog in this video. Let us hope to be unburdened by what may be, as the US, Israel and Iran face off in a Mexican showdown of three.

Well, it's over. For now.

What we witnessed in this 2024 election was a master class in voter manipulation. I often wonder how they do it. How they can produce an almost cult like following for two of the most flawed politicians in recent memory. How is it that so many voters can be lead by their noses to the voting booth in a fevered pitch of anxiety?

In my opinion it is done by instilling fear in the minds of the voters. Fear of the other, fear of what the opposition party may have in store if elected, fear of civil war, riots, detention camps. Fear, fear, fear. It was a constant barrage of fear, to make one yearn for a savior that will lead one to the electoral promised land.

Fear is the arrow, and the media is the bow. Those that benefit from our fear are the archers and our minds are the target.

If so, then why does fear work so well on so many people?

"I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell".

~ Bruce Dickinson aka Christopher Walken

Four more days. Four more days of the overtly loud and incessant drone of cowbell in our ears.

Imagine, if you will:

An overweight American media, gut hanging out over a strained belt line, with disregard for the consequences of their ululations and stomach jiggling gyrations, calls out in multi point harmony for a more divergent version of a well known sound track. A track about "The Reaper", replete with fear of "the other", and with overtones of cataclysmic repercussions of a miscast vote in the most important election of all time, immemorial.

A "fevered" uniparty studio producer driven by an expedient need to subvert the arrangement of a score laid down long ago, from a different time and a different place, proclaims with a wink and a nod to the duopoly: "Don't be burdened by what has been, let us make cowbell great again" as his lips flutter and twist while talking from both sides of his mouth. His job, besides his bank account's bottom line, is choreographing your thoughts into a leitmotif of fascist and nazi symbolism. Like a conductor he points his baton to the left and then to the right which results in a discordant cacophony of noise that rises above the signal as it crescendos into a chorus of hatred towards one another.

The American polity, divided by a classic standard gone awry, are split into camps that want to leave the song as they remember it and those that want to embellish its rhythmic aspects, in an oppositional dichotomy of status quo versus change. The cowbell represents a new normal, an instrument of change. It's a producer's tool. Its purpose is not so much to change the song as it is to bend the will of the listener. And to keep the listeners divided, like a two channel stereo output, ultimately, combined into a singular monophonic output source.

And the cowbell drones on.

Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink.

Wow! Can you believe the fear that's being ginned up in this election? Sure, fear is a big factor in every election but this one is over the top. Who, that are old enough to have lived through it, can forget the nuclear blast ad from the 1964 election. That visual may not be aired this election cycle, but it sure is implied.

Fear is the tool of the powerful, and those that covet power.

It resides in the amygdala, also known as the lizard brain. As a primal emotion its function is fight or flight, or to put it another way, a preservation device.

Fear has been used by the powerful probably since the advent of social cohesion, the main advantage of humans living in groups is safety, the prime motivation after food and water.

The fear today is palpable. From all political sides of the power spectrum. Civil war, nuclear war, violent riots, financial ruin, martial law, cancel culture, prison for misinformation, on and on. We are inundated with that which tickles the lizard brain. Have you noticed that folks are being lead around by their noses?

Attribution: Triune Brain, Wikimedia Commons

Ever have those strange moments when surrealism temporarily supplants reality? Like a certain moment in time isn't real and you question it really happening? You feel outside of yourself like you're in another dimension? Here's an example.

That's happened to me several times in the past, but I've been feeling that way many times during the last four or five years, like all this really isn't happening. How can it be that life has changed so quickly? It seems like the change hasn't been organic, that some surreal hand has directed it all. Like it hasn't happened naturally, like it's all been orchestrated.

I wonder, have all great societal changes happen this way?

Things are weird and keep getting weirder. Like an infinite regression of weirdness. Like turtles stacked one upon another, holding up a flat earth.

Attribution: Wikimedia Commons

Are the proxy wars in Ukraine and the Mideast about propping up the failing US dollar and world hegemony?

Yes, probably, but with a caveat.

In a world that is experiencing resource depletion and most probable peak oil, what will be the most valuable resource in the near future?

World War III will be about oil and gas. It's all about energy, the lifeblood of world economies, and those who would be king of the world.

Attribution: Pixabay

As you read this my wife and I will be on our way to the gorgeous white sand and blue waters of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

We really lucked out on this one. Gulf Shores is just a hop, skip and a jump from Hurricane Helene's landfall in the panhandle of Florida. I hope those folks over there in the Big Bend area will be OK. Helene was a Cat. 4 when it hit the shore, it's a big one.

The area east of the hurricane is getting hammered as well. There's massive rain and wind over Florida, and it will move up into Georgia and the Appalachians. To the west of the hurricane, where Gulf Shores is, will be pretty calm and quiet. Like I said, we really got lucky on this one, a little wobble to the west and our vacation will have been much different, as in nonexistent.

It was a nail biter all week tracking the hurricane and it's a relief that we get to go, but at the same time we feel guilty in our pleasure knowing what those folks are going through just a short distance away. A hurricane, Beryl, went right over the top of us in Southeast Texas a few months ago. It made landfall south of Houston as a Cat. 1 hurricane and by the time it went over us it was just a tropical storm, but that was bad enough. There was flooding, trees down everywhere and we were without electricity for 6 days. That, I'm sure, is nothing compared to what folks are going through beneath Helene.

Hopefully everyone got to high ground.

This is the strangest life, I've ever known. -Jim Morrison

Daedalus told his son Icarus: Don't fly too close to the sun or it will melt your wings and into the sea you will plummet. Don't fly too low or your wings will collect water and into the sea you will plunge.

Yet, Icarus in his exuberance flew too high and paid the toll of greed, ambition and hope with his life.

There is but one thing on this earth that comes close to matching the power of the sun. We as a species, as a country, as a polity are forgoing Daedalus's warning of balance between the extremes. Madmen are in the throes of greed and ambition in lieu of hope, as we potentially soar ever closer to our metaphorical watery cortege.

Where are we headed in this country, post Constitution? Have you given it any thought?

The US Constitution is one of the most, if not the most, enlightened documents in the history of mankind. It was meant to curtail the power of the federal government, to keep it in check. Notice I used the word "was" since it seems like there no longer are any checks on our government.

What result would you expect from the nexus of big money and the mainstream media in our electoral process? Big money invests in protecting big money and the media invests in making big money for the media. Big money seems to be the common denominator on this grease slickened mobius strip of an election process, wouldn't you say?

Would this current circus of an election not be the natural evolutionary point of that amalgamation of greed, deceit and avarice?