The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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America Is In A Civil War

If you like my writing, please check out my blog Radical Second Things and leave a donation so I can continue doing this.

Everything that we have seen in recent years, since the market crash of 2007, seems terrifying, chaotic and crazy because of the frame of reference most Americans have.

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The Death of Intellectual Conservatism

I was a conservative from roughly 2004 - 2011. At only 29 years old, that was a very significant amount of time and a very critical point of time for forming intellectual ideas.

I was on a bunch of drugs most of that time too, as many of the readers and founders of this blog know well. That may very well have had an impact. Nevertheless, I read a great deal of conservative literature and genuinely believed in it.

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Trump's Fascist Component

The Republican Party does not like Trump. Strategists for the GOP are saying he will not be the nominee. The conservative friends I have have called him a "carnival barker" and an "embarassment." Yet that embarrassing carnival barker is drawing the poll numbers and the crowds while they, with all their good intent, have candidates who are in the doldrums as far as numbers. The basis of what conservatism is is apparent and it's not pretty. As I said in my first piece, Trump taps in to voters' hearts and minds while the rest of the party and its propaganda outlets are left flabbergasted and disoriented. He has been channeled very roughly by Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Rand Paul only to keep standing, nodding his duck face and his toupee (or whatever that rodent on his head is) in smug arrogance.

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Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Tap In To The Same Frustration

If you like my writing, please check out my blog Radical Second Things and leave a donation so I can continue doing this.

I am not sure how many Dagblog readers are aware of Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg is the modern conservative intellectual heavyweight, if there can be such a thing. He replaced William F. Buckley in heading the conservative magazine National Review and he has written a number of silly books including Liberal Fascism, a strange book that features a happy face with a Hitler mustache on it. (He's not very original so he probably got that idea from Alan Moore's Watchmen graphic novel.)

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Another One Gone: Bye Bye, Doris Kildall

I wrote about it here before - my girlfriend, Jennifer Reimer, a beautiful and brilliant young woman who was nonetheless plagued by demons, died at 30 years old April 14, 2014.

Last week, I lost another beautiful angel - my grandmother, Dodie, Doris Kildall. I have had to lose two loved ones, from slow motion health decline factors, in less than six months. I'm not apologetic to anyone who feels offended by anything I say or do at this point - they can do it themselves and tell me what I've done wrong.

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Open Mikes Q&A With Michael Maiello And Michael Orion Powell

I said it in my last interview with him - Michael Maiello is one of my best publishing friends. He not only saw me through the hard and good times but also seemed to see something in me nearly from the beginning. Our regular "Open Mikes" Q&A idea was his own and he wanted to switch it up this time - asking me questions! Gosh gee, I didn't even know I had thoughts that anyone would find that interesting. Here goes.....

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Kshama Sawant, Jess Spear, and the Uncompromising “Free” Market

In Seattle, socialist Kshama Sawant has been unusually successful in her progress as city councilwoman. While it will take a good while to apply, she did succeed in pushing $15 minimum wage for the city of Seattle. 

The Socialist Alternative movement continued with Jess Spear, who ran a pretty stellar campaign against Frank Chopp for the position of speaker. Nevertheless, Spear was “overwhelmed,” as the Seattle P.I. put it, with Chopp raking it 80 percent of ballots, and the explanations why are pretty storied.

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