As online holiday shopping starts, please use my Amazon affiliate link

By David McElroy · November 20, 2018

Every time I mention a book on here, I try to remember to include a link to buy that book at Amazon.com. You might have heard of them.

I’m not just including the link out of the kindness of my heart, of course. I’m a member of an Amazon program that pays me a small commission every time you buy something from there after you’ve clicked a link on my site.

I don’t make a ton of money from this — it probably averages $30 a month — but it helps offset the cost of cat and dog food. And right now, it can even help offset the cost of the long transition I’m going through to update the site to a new design and “plumbing” underneath the surface of what you see. (That upgrade has taken longer than I ever thought it would.)

But if you don’t mind, I’d like to explain how you can help support this site as you do online shopping in the next month or so — and it won’t cost you a nickel.

If you seen a book or other product I mention and you’re interested in, click on the link. Buy it if you’d like. But even if you don’t buy that product, I will still get a commission from Amazon for anything else you buy.

So if you come to my page and click on a link — whether it’s a book link or just that nice little Amazon ad on this page — whatever you order next will earn a commission for me. It’s usually about 4 percent, but it varies depending on the product. And it doesn’t increase the price you pay for the product. It’s a win for both of us.

Just for the record, you keep complete privacy. I don’t know who has clicked one of m links. I won’t know what you’ve ordered. Amazon lets me know what products people are buying after clicking on my links — so I’ll know what to promote — but I have no way of knowing who bought anything or of linking you to a purchase.

(Last month, I earned commissions on a bunch of sex toys, with is the most interesting thing I’ve seen so far. It’s usually just vitamins or dog food or books or a million other mundane items.)

So as you do your shopping at Amazon, please take the time to start with a link here first.

And just to make sure that I’m being clear, here’s a disclaimer that the lawyers from Amazon like me to use:

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

I appreciate those of you who’ve supported me in this way for the last couple of years. I hope to greatly expand my use of Amazon links in the future, but that’s a story for another time.

Have a great Thanksgiving — and then buy all your stuff from Amazon through my link. Thanks.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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