Author Archives: Billy Sinclair

Hell yes!

Does a bear use Charmin toilet tissue to clean his behind?

Hell no!

So, what does it say about American society when a blue animated bear must instruct people about what paper product they should use after a sit-down in their bathroom?

Yet there are thousands of Americans—if not tens of thousands—who rush to their favorite grocery to buy one of the most expensive brands of toilet tissue in the store because a blue, ass-shaking bear told them to do so. Their decision to purchase was not based on product quality or price but rather on the blue bear’s recommendation.

I suspect, without any real evidence, that some of these toilet tissue buyers probably participated in a CNN poll several years ago in which 10 percent of American law school graduates said Judge Judy was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

That is how advertising dumbs down Americans.

Macho muscle cars and heavy duty tough truck ads tell men what and how to drive while racy undergarments and leak protection feminine products tell women what to wear when they join those brutes behind wheels on a “night out on the town” during which time their parents sit home watching Blue Bloods medical ads about health products that have 15 seconds of benefits and 30 seconds of life-threatening side effects.

Meanwhile, mass shootings, debt-ceiling economic collapse, world famines and wars, environmental disasters, and the threat of nuclear annihilation are put on the “pay no mind to” list.

But there may be a solution to improving these little life absurdities.

Take that damn blue bear, insert a little artificial intelligence in its head, add 20 words to its vocabulary, and dye its hair orange—and America will have itself a president who will tell us he alone can fix every life problem in the country, from how to clean your ass, spell covfefe, drink bleach, and move a hurricane from one state to another with a magic marker.

We can all then rejoin the “leave it to beaver” era when a bear shit privately in the woods and toilet tissue remained in the bathroom unnoticed till needed.

Texas, and America, experienced another mass shooting with an assault weapon this past weekend.

The first assault weapon in U.S. was the Gatling gun—a weapon patented in 1862 by Robert Jordan Gatling that would fire more than 200 bullets in a minute. Though used sparingly in the Civil War, the weapon saw greater use in the 1870s and 1880s, not only in America but across Europe.

The Gatling gun was an “assault” weapon used by the Army in battles against Native Americans over that two-decade span.

For example, 3,000 White American soldiers used the weapon against 700 Native American warriors during the Red River War in Texas in 1874. The Army needed the weapon to remove Native American tribes—Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho—from the Southern Plains to reservations during the great theft of Indian land.

This “assault” weapon was used because it was designed to kill people in large numbers in a short period of time.

Two other American “assault” weapons were also created during the Civil War era: The Spencer Repeating Rifle in 1860 and the Winchester Repeating Rifle in 1866.

Both weapons were made to kill people, not animals. They were not made for individual or home protection. Their only purpose was to allow the shooter to kill as many people as desired through a rapid fire procession.

Gun proponents, especially assault weapon owners, say “mass shootings” are a byproduct of mental illness—not the prevalence of guns.

History is not kind to that argument.

The de-institutionalization of mentally people in California in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a series of horrific mass murders (like the John Frazier murders in 1970) and unleashed some serial killers (like Edmund Kemper in 1973).

But there were no mass shootings at shopping centers, schools, places of worship, or work places like the hundreds of assault weapon massing shootings being seen across the country today.

Mass shooters are generally avid gun owners, possessing multiple types of assault weapons. For a host of real or imagined grievances against society in general or certain people in particular, they use their “assault” weapons to kill as many people as possible to settle their grievances.

In other words, they fulfill the original purpose that the assault weapon was created for—to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible.

That is the methodical “assault” intent of such weapons as evidenced by the first real mass shooting in the United States—the Texas Tower Shooting in 1966 that left 14 people dead at the hands of Charles Whitman, an avid gun owner just his father was.

Was Charles Whitman mentally ill? Probably, in some textbook kind of way. But his intent to kill as many people as possible from the Texas Tower was motivated by anger, rage, and grievance.

Probably half of the nation’s population suffers from some sort of “mental illness.” One trip into the dark side of social media where all sorts of conspiracy theories and racial hatred and violent impulses exist reveals American “mental illness” on display.

Many assault weapon owners will now say the Allen, Texas mall shooter was one of those social media “mentally ill” extremist.

Yet many of these assault weapon enthusiasts, like some in Congress, will simultaneously say that the thousands of people who stormed the nation’s capitol of January 6, 2021 shouting “kill Mike Pence” were proud gun-owning “patriots” trying to protect White people from the “Deep State” run by the “let’s go Brandon” mafia.

Hatred is not mental illness. It’s a social plague that allows people to see violence as a natural response in support of their own belief system.

It may be reasonably said that mental illness is an “excuse” for mass shootings but it is the insane prevalence of “assault weapons” that is the cause for such shootings.

Age produces a certain intolerance for stupidity. The “here’s your sign” kind of stupidity made hilarious by comedian Bill Engvall.

Each morning I awaken at roughly 4:00 a.m. and before starting the day’s work assignment, I fix a cup of Folgers instant coffee, turn on my computer, and head for Yahoo News. I want to make sure the world is still standing after a night of incomprehensible violence in some part of the world. I may devote all of ten seconds wondering how humans developed the audacity to call humankind “civilized.”

As I scroll through the news feed trying to find something relevant to read, I see enticements about 8 “stunning see through bikini photos” of some British (and/other other nationality) Wang Dang Doodle model, soccer star, Alpine skier, pro wrestler, or kangaroo rider on the beaches in Arizona.

Why would a man, woman, transgender, or no gender give a “good flying fuck” (and I don’t even want to think about where that term came from) about Wang Dang Doodle in a see through bikini bear-hugging a cactus plant in a New Mexico desert.

Maybe I’m too old to appreciate the “finer things” in life anymore. I find it more interesting, and occasionally more enjoyable, to watch the human traffic moving about in the parking lot of the local grocery.

Another thing on my mind that pisses me off is this “transgender issue.”

The Washington Post recently posted an op-ed piece about “understanding biological sex.” The newspaper reported that more than 7,000 of its readers took valuable time out of their lives to pass their opinion about what another person wants to be sexually, how they wish to dress in public, and how they view sex in general.

Folks, this is “breaking news happening right now”: planet earth is dying and humankind is just yards from the end zone.

Take my advice please: you be whatever the fuck you want to be and let the other person be whatever the fuck they want to be. It will make life so much simpler, perhaps even happier, as we all hurdle towards the “end days” or certainly toward our last day.

Finally but not lastly, I’ve had about as much of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s stupidity as I can stand. When I see her name, I will run away in fear of being blighted by the stench of it. This Congressional scientist recently informed the public that global warming is a natural phenomenon brought about because the earth is a spinning ball in the universe; and because that is the natural order of things, current day Americans should not be required to pay taxes to subsidize climate change because people in the Ice Age (more than 11,000 years ago) did not have to pay taxes to keep the earth frozen.

That is the new political criteria for being a U.S. Congressperson.

At least George Santos, like we all do, knows that world is square and that it sits motionless on a catalytic converter just five miles from the third rock to the sun.

America has become a society of rage

This rage is driven by racism, political divisions, cultural differences, and for-profit industries that promote violence.

The evening news on one local channel in San Antonio recently led with three stories about road rage, one involving a promising young college student.

Stories appearing in Yahoo News over the past weekend carried reports about current and former sports figures arrested for violent behavior.

Our society has become so infested with rage that too many athletes feel that violence, whether mimic or actual, enhances their “brand.”

In other words, they are not “for real” unless they can shoot a gun like they shoot a basketball or hit their partners like they hit baseballs.

Rage seeps into the very fabric of society. It stains and ultimately rots the threads that hold the society together.

A 16-year-old Black teenager—the kind of kid everyone would be proud to have as a son—mistakenly walked up to the house of an 84-year-old White man in Kansas City looking for his brother and was shot, and seriously wounded, by the embittered racist old White man. The Black kid survived; the old White man went to jail.

The incident has triggered a “national discussion” about race in America—especially after it was reported that three White families refused to help the wounded young Black teenager seeking assistance.

Rage leads to some White people in our military betraying our county to declared enemies who are not only encouraged but actually praised for their traitorous actions by lunatic right-wing Congressional leaders.

That is the fabric of our rage-driven American society today.

So, if a young college student or a person of different color cuts off an already pissed off driver, he (much more often than a she) feels he has a license to shoot and kill the offending driver with one of the dozens of guns he keeps handy for such a moment.

In Texas, White men, especially those with former military or law enforcement backgrounds, have a license to either run over or shoot to kill any Black Lives Matter protestors that stand in his way.

In Ohio, White police officers can shoot an unarmed Black man 46 times for a traffic violation without any accountability.

More than half of all murders committed in the U.S. each year are committed in the South—the former Confederate States of America. Most of those murders are not committed by “bad guys” with a gun but rather by “good guys” with a gun who let their rage make them feel they have a license to kill.

Rage is a cancer in society. It awakens the worse demons in all of us. And it will consume our society.

These three words are frequently employed to describe a situation in which justice has been debased or wrongfully withheld;

What was done to Lydell Grant in Houston, Texas in 2010 was a travesty of justice. He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a man to death in a barroom.

Grant was wrongfully convicted.

He was innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said as much in 2021 when the court declared Grant “actually innocent” for the barroom killing. DNA evidence and a confession by the real killer unequivocally confirmed his innocence.

Grant’s exoneration gained national media attention because of the travesty of justice in his wrongful conviction. The State of Texas tried to make amends for the seven years he spent in the state’s prison system by awarding him $1 million in compensation.

As of this month, Texas had paid Grant $317,000. The state still owes him $673,000.

Prison, standing alone, teaches an inmate nothing. Whatever an inmate gains or loses in prison depends exclusively upon the endeavors, mentally and physically, they undertake while incarcerated.

The success or failure to those endeavors will be determined by two frames of mind.

First, a reckless, irresponsible reaction to people, events and circumstances that percolates throughout any given incarcerated day which inevitably lead to negative consequences. Or, second, a measured, self-discipline reaction to all the myriad situations that arise in an angry, hostile, fucked-up environment which brings an acceptable level of tolerance. In other words, your mouth stays closed when every fiber in your brain screams “fuck you!”

One is lack of control, the other is control.

I don’t know what kind of inmate Grant was during his seven years in prison. I just know he was a former inmate given $1 million dollars and “we’re so sorry” pass from the State of Texas upon his release from prison.

So what did Grant do with that $317,000?

He bought a goddamn gun he used to kill a 33-year-old man in a “road rage” incident earlier this month in Houston.

Texas still owes him that $673,000 that it will have to continue to pay him while he awaits disposition of the road rage killing. If convicted, most of the remaining $673,000 will most probably go to court costs and victim restitution. He will not enjoy it in prison, for sure.

Did prison damage Lydell Grant?

I doubt it.

I’m sure that with a little cache of money in the bank, a socially inherited right to feel victimized, and a desire (not need) to open or conceal carry a firearm as a license to shoot the fuck out of anyone who cut him off in traffic, the “prison experience” had nothing to do with Grant’s decision to kill that man because of road rage.

Prison is a beast with a lot of warts. I don’t think “road rage” is one of them. That wart belongs strictly to stupidity.