Tomorrow Betty Windsor is set to become the longest-reigning British moochocrat & the oldest living corpse. There’s no way in hell I won’t commemorate that ignoble event. But every time I post on Betty there are people who take umbrage–some because it’s not serious enough, others because they think I ridicule.

Let me assure you, I take feudalism very seriously indeed. Nothing fries me more than indolent sloths feeding off public health & education. As for ridicule, truth-telling about moochocracy only seems mockery. There’s really no need for embellishment.

And let me just insist, satire is the genre of the oppressed. Granted, to call my writings satire is an elastic definition but can we settle on sarcasm then if satire is beyond my reach

Bernie Sanders is gonna have to eat his birthday cake without my felicitations. As long as he will not stand steadfast with Palestinians, the Black community, & refugees, & thinks it’s okay to drone bomb people if it’s ‘selectively & effectively’ done, then he’s nothing but a windbag–& a racist one at that. We need his politics like we need a hole in the head.

The drowning death of baby Aylan Kurdi & the overwhelming grief we witnessed in his father highlights the central place of children in the tsunami of refugees & immigrants all over this planet. And it also exposes the vicious, small-minded xenophobia & social hatred of politicians like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, & the whole swamp of EU leaders who respond with walls & militarizing the borders.

Here’s one of those things that lets us know the human race really is “all that.” A little refugee boy at the train station in Budapest is trying on shoes donated by people in Hungary–a country where 35 percent of the people live below the poverty line. The regime put up razor wire fences, shut down the trains, manhandled refugees before being forced to open the borders. But the people of Hungary are another story altogether.

The same human kindness & solidarity extended by working people in Hungary is given by Mexicans who rush with food, medical supplies, clothing, & well-wishes to meet the trains carrying Central American immigrants to the US border. People in Texas donated the same to a church providing for thousands of women with children crossing the US border & people in Indonesia offered hospitalities of all kinds to Rohingya refugees last May.

This is a refugee being manhandled & arrested by Hungarian cops. A swarm of riot cops to handle a woman & her child. Hungary tried to keep refugees from entering the country with razor wire fences, phalanxes of cops, & shutting down the trains, but were overwhelmed by the sheer number–estimated at 200,000 people.

Media reports that many apply for asylum in Hungary but “quickly try to leave for richer EU countries.” “Quickly” would be the operative word; it doesn’t appear refugees can get out of the country fast enough. It’s an EU country & a member of NATO so it has a big fat military budget draining the economy. It’s also under IMF discipline. That would explain why as of June 2015, 35 percent of the population live below the poverty line & why the government no longer reports poverty-related statistics. It doesn’t make capitalism look that good–especially with the photos of seniors battling riot cops against evictions.