kanesrealm

If you've been playing the home edition of my little game here, you're pretty much up to date on many of my political opinions, not to mention the god thing. I've been plowing the blogging field for eleven years, with kanesrealm there are close to 400 commentaries provided for your pleasure or nausea. It has been my comfort and a frustration that now needs to be squashed. I've often mused about what happens to bloggers when they simply disappear? Did they die? Did they get bored? Did they wise up? I've taken a couple of breaks and let my readers know when I was doing it. A blog is a snapshot in time, the poster's synaptic firestorm, however disjointed or blathering it may be, it is a story of sorts and when the end has come, it should be said. A dragon and a few knights would make the ending more gratifying but that's not here. Mind you, it doesn't mean there can't be a sequel. Clearly I'm not dead... yet, otherwise I wouldn't be writing t

Anyone that regularly reads this blog knows that I have luke warm feelings about social media in general, particularly Facebook. We now know because of pressure from Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Mark Zuckerberg and his executives stonewalled and outright lied that they didn't know that false stories dressed up as news were being circulated on their platform during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign and that a fair amount was immenating from Russia and it's satellites, all at a profit to Facebook. There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire, aside from the grossly bloated value of Facebook's stock, the platform is now reaching two billion people worldwide and growing. Zuckerberg's mentor and original investor has sounded an alarm concerning Facebook's behavior and business model, he has been joined by a former Facebook manager and a former Google executive in saying that Facebook needs to clean up it's act. They are not alone, many in Silicon

It was the second century Roman scholar Maximus Deficatus who first plunged the depths of this subject. Something of a humorist in his day, his public lectures were legendary for leaving many a Roman Senator with long brown streaks on the back of their togas. Today during a meeting with numerous officials on the subject of immigration, President Trump asked why we get so many people coming from "shithole" countries, refererencing Haiti and Africa. It's not clear the President is aware Africa is a continent containing many countries. He said if Nigerians saw America they wouldn't want to go back to their huts. He doesn't seem to know that Nigeria is a nation of 186 million people with many beautiful cities as well as impoverished areas. He wondered why we can't get more Norwegians. Well Mr. President there isn't a line of Norwegians waiting to come, because they don't want to. Poor people living in hellish depravation do want to come, to pursue the fa

Blogging is not the future of social media. The site you're currently on, as you know because you're savvy, is hosted by Blogger, the first and therefore oldest personal blogging forum on the internet. It was originally a start-up company consisting of those bold new entrepreneurs that saw the potential of what the internet could be. Google purchased Blogger a few years back, which irritated a number of people because they don't like Google. I truly don't get the anti Google sentiment because the reality is they are simply one player, a giant one, but one, of many that are engaged in the business of compiling data on everyone that clicks connect on whatever your device of choice happens to be. Ever hear of Facebook and their one billion users who happily live out their lives in full view? There are numerous blogging sites and I've experimented with a couple of them and I still prefer Blogger for it's simplicity. That simplicity and some limitations is why o

At least for now. Stephen K. Bannon, Republican party destroyer, self identified Leninist and arch nemesis of the razor is out as Chairman of Breitbart News. The Mercer family which owns Breitbart dumped Bannon this afternoon. He has been on thin ice with the billionaire family for many months and his comments in the Michael Wolff book, "Fire and Fury" was a bridge too far. The Mercers are major behind the scenes supporters of Donald Trump and they have had enough of his arrogance and self delusion as a master of the universe and kingmaker of Trump, which he never was. Now Bannon is unemployed and has no platform from which to launch his daily assaults on his enemies. More importantly he's now cut off from the Mercer's money. Bannon is not a poor man but he's not in the megabucks ballpark of those he's served. So what does he do now? Will he use his savings to go out on the campaign trail to hurl fire bombs at the Republican establishment? Not likely.

I smell confusion, a confusion spread by the media and politicians who either need a Constitutional refresher or are deliberately pretending the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is easy to trigger. Section 4 is what matters in the case of removing Donald J. Trump for alleged mental deficiencies. It reads exactly as follows: "Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office of Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall r

Did you see Oprah Winfrey announce last night that she was running for President in 2020? No? Neither did I, because she didn't. She was at the Golden Globe Awards to receive the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. She delivered a stirring and thought provoking speech about the empowerment of women and putting an end to the reign of powerful men who have abused women. We can all applaud that. Today the media devoted a huge amount of time to talking about Oprah running for President. Is there no starvation to cover? Is there no genocide in the world? Is there no healthcare crisis in the United States? Is there no poverty? Is there nothing more important than idle speculation about Oprah Winfrey? There have been more than a few times over the past twenty years when people have suggested Oprah should run for President. In 1999 when Donald Trump was considering a Presidential run he was asked if he would consider selecting a woman as his running mate and he said "y

In 2017 Engelbert Humperdinck hit an incredible milestone and opened up to the world about a very personal tragedy. In 1967 after ten years of trying to make it in showbiz Arnold George Dorsey, by then known as Engelbert Humperdinck after the nineteenth century German composer of the same name, became an international star with the hit song "Release Me". The song hit number one on the charts doing the unthinkable by keeping The Beatles from that slot with their Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane release. Engelbert ruled the charts for 56 weeks and dominated in the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic. That same year he would hit again with The Last Waltz. Engelbert Humperdinck, the singer with a funny name, had finally done it, he was an international star and the decades would fly by with hit after hit with a never wavering commitment to his style of singing. He never had a single lesson and we are all the better for it. He celebrated 2017 with the 50th Anniversary of

"Sloppy Steve Bannon" is on a mission to clean up his gaffes in the book "Fire and Fury". In Trump World a gaffe is when you tell the truth about the Trump family. Self proclaimed Leninist and all round destroyer Bannon is softening his statements about Trump, particularly Don Jr., whom he previously accused of being treasonous. Now Don Jr. is a great American and swell guy. Bannon's delusion that he is a Kingmaker is beginning to cause him his own problems, the most important of which is the strain between himself and billionaire family the Mercers, it is they who financed the late Andrew Breitbart and kept Breitbart News going. They have publicly distanced themselves from Bannon and one wanders if Bannon may again exit Breitbart, this time forever. The Ivy League educated Bannon who was a Goldman Sachs executive and wannabe Hollywood producer continues to go out on the campaign trail and talks to blue collar workers like he's one of them, shades

The marijuana laws of the United States are extremely complicated jurisdictionally and by categorization. It's time to put an end to that. The Trump Administration's Justice Department under the leadership of Jeff Sessions has just rolled back the Obama Administration's policy of essentially not prosecuting marijuana growers and sellers in states where recreational use is legal and those businesses are in compliance with their state laws and not suspected of involvement with criminal enterprises triggering federal investigation. Neither Trump or Sessions have said they are in fact going after those legal merchants for violating federal law and no directives to do so have been issued to U.S. Attorneys. Sessions is a longtime opponent of marijuana legalization and Trump is a wild card who will do anything to divert attention away from his own whackiness and potential meltdown. Do not succumb to the belief that the Obama Administration was pro marijuana because of th

Rumors abound that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will exit the House of Representatives in 2018. When he was asked in November and December if he was leaving, he kept walking and coyly replied, "I'm not leaving anytime soon." Which is true, he won't leave until January 2019. He hasn't been asked the right question, which is, are you going to be on the primary ballot in 2018? Good money says no, but even if he is it will be about giving the governor of Wisconsin the opportunity to appoint his successor after a resignation next January, which of course would be a major fuck you to the voters of the 1st district of that state but I'm getting ahead of myself. Ryan's ability to win again is in question so the smart move is to not run again in 2018. This frees him as Speaker to devote the entire year to his wet dream of destroying or at least substantially disembowling Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The jewel in his tiny crown of pettiness and the f

There's a new book out by Michael Wolff called "Fire and Fury", chronicling the dysfunction of the Trump Campaign and inside the Whitehouse. Explosive would be a mild word to describe it. Among the headline grabbing excerpts are the statements made for the book by Stephen Bannon, including his belief that Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer in the summer of 2016 was "treasonous and unpatriotic." Bannon asserts that Special Prosecutor Mueller will get President Trump through Mannefort, Trump Jr. and Kushner and it's all about "money laundering". A close billionaire friend of the President is quoted as saying Trump is not only crazy, he's stupid. According to Wolff when the late Roger Ailes, who was a campaign advisor, recommended to Trump that he consider asking John Boehner to be his Chief of Staff, he didn't know who that was. Other insiders in the Whitehouse believe the President is barely semi-literate. It should be