Brownback. . . refused to acknowledge that he had signed a tax increase. “Look at the totality of the picture,” he said. “When you look at that, it is a tax cut.” Nobody else saw it that way. “Not only is this a tax increase, it is the largest tax increase in state history.”

Well, if this is what people voted for, this is what they very richly deserve. And I don’t mean the sales tax discussed here. I mean a governor who is so pathetic, so inept that all he can offer to the voters is this impotent equivocation about a tax raise meaning a tax cut. As if fiddling with taxes was the extent of gubernatorial duties.

We just went to dinner where we ate Tajik plov, listened to Disney songs, watched Ukrainian comedy videos on YouTube, and had tiramisu.

It also really annoys me when people refer to the Charleston killer as “a kid.”

The man is 21 years old. Let’s stop pretending he’s some confused little child.

Every event, no matter how earth – shattering, always ends up being reduced to a meme. Every discussion of the Charleston massacre has been downgraded to the endless rehashing of the need to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina ‘ s capital. I have scrolled through my newsfeed and discovered not a single article among dozens and dozens that discussed any aspect of the tragedy but the stupid flag.

Yes, the removal of the flag will have symbolic value. But I’m fed up with the symbolic, to be honest. Aren’t you? We’ve all heard endless blather about the symbolic value of electing the first black president, but after Obama has been in office for 7 years, there’s one racist outbreak of violence after another. And the fault lies with those who fixate on the symbolic and pay no attention to anything less cutesy and easy to sell in a neat package with a bow.

Recently, my colleagues went into a frenzy of email – writing and excited chirping over the “politically incorrect” name of the campus grill. When asked why the entirely inconsequential grill name aroused such activity while it was impossible to get anyone to protest the radical budget cuts the governor was imposing on our state’s higher education, the colleagues cheerfully stated that they feel impotent to change anything that really mattered, so they used the grill name as an opportunity to feel like they were still doing something in the midst of all this impotence.

Fixating on the flag is an easy out. All that one needs to do to feel self-righteous is to say or write an anti-flag screed. No actual effort goes into such armchair activism. No acknowledgement of the realities of racism needs to take place. Let’s just declare that somebody else should rename a grill or remove a flag while we go take a rest from this intense political battle we’ve just won.

Dylann Roof ‘ s manifesto has surfaced. There is, of course, a big probability it’s not really his. We will be seeing tons of copycats and crazies using the situation to hide behind Roof and express the hatred they otherwise don’t dare to show.

The manifesto is way too articulate for this fellow.

Carnegie Mellon University has conducted the weirdest experiment I can think of and has arrived at the painfully obvious conclusion:

The findings seem to indicate that “the instruction to have more sex leads to a decline in wanting for sex and in enjoyment of sex.”

Yes, normal healthy people don’t get sexually aroused because somebody tells them to. How utterly shocking. The “scientist” who conducted the test doesn’t mean that his findings necessarily mean that sex is evil.

Putin decided to lease an enormous stretch of land in Eastern Siberia to China for 50 years. Obviously, this lease is actually a sale because how do you just displace the Chinese from there 50 years later?

The Chinese are saying they are planning to grow sunflowers there. 284,050 acres of sunflowers in Eastern Siberia. This totally makes sense, especially given that sunflowers don’t grow in the climate of that area.

And it also made crazy oodles of sense to sink a trillion roubles and Russia’s relationship with the West into the annexation of the Crimea when there is so much unused land in Russia that’s being sold piecemeal.

Of course, it’s not all as deranged as it sounds. There is a logic behind all this, and that logic is called “Let’s stick it to the West.” Americans will not be happy over the expansion of China, and Putin will gladly cut parts of Russia off to spite the US.

So let’s look at the poor family of Dylann Roof ‘ s that is so hugely victimized by the murders he committed.

This weird – looking fellow is Dylann ‘ s father, a wife – beater and a freak. Dylann is from a broken home and the reason for the home being broken is the father’s violence. Of course, before the father had a chance to break the home he had with Dylann ‘ s stepmother, Dylann ‘ s mother had walked out on her son and refused to have much to do with him.

Low-lifes, dead-beats, irresponsible parents who abandon their kids  – this is the world that produced this murderer. None of this makes him any less responsible, of course, but we should abstain from equaling the hardship of the people who made him what he is with that of his victims.

You can read more here on the bizarre doings of this freaky family.

The fashion of the Spanish Civil War has come to the English-speaking world. In Drought, an Englishman who is suffering from hysteria comes to the post-war Spain to “feel alive.”

In Spain, the long-suffering hysteric called John encounters an endless collection of the hoariest stereotypes about the country known to humanity. Sullen, inarticulate men obsessed with their honor, pasodoble-dancing coy women with brown legs (the author seems to have some sort of a brown – leg fetish), useless, inept Spanish men, submissive, self-sacrificing sisters, gossipy neighbors, and overbearing, sulky fathers.

The moment the author runs out of these stereotypes, the novel ends.

Author: Ronald Fraser
Title: Drought
Language: English
My rating: 1 out of 10

Turned on the television and saw the judge at Dylann Roof’s hearing blather on and on about how the murderer’s family members “are also victims.” He definitely gave their “victimhood” more attention than to that of the murdered people.

When the judge started on with “we need to remember that the 9 people who are dead are not the only victims here”, I was naive enough to think he was about to talk about the African American community in Charleston. But no, the real victims here are the relatives of the murderer who “found themselves in the midst of a whirlwind of attention.” Yes, those poor little bunnies. Let’s all feel bad for them now.