Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

We’re at the cottage. I took the train up this morning, which is, in my opinion, the loveliest and most underrated way to travel. I’d planned to get a bit of writing done but, in the end, the emphasis has to be on ‘a little.’ Helena and Isabel had driven up on Thursday, so Helena was there to meet me at the station.
We had an ice cream outdoors on what passes for a town square in the village of Rovensko pod Troskami, and it’s less than a 5 minute drive from there.
Now, when I go to the cottage, I like to have something to do, because I get bored as hell just sitting around the house, watching Czech TV. So, I was quite happy to go out and pick a couple of bowls of red currants. The bush was absolutely thick with the brilliantly red little globules, it looked like some people got drunk and went crazy while decorating the Christmas tree. So, it was easy.
The next task was less so. Helena and I walked up the hill to just outside the village where her dad has a small potato patch, and spent a couple of hours weeding it. I was short of breath and sweating and aching before we’d even got properly into the first row. After a couple of hours I felt like I’d just completed a marathon, but we did get the job done. Maybe not perfectly, but we got rid of all the big weeds and didn’t kill any potato plants, and that’s about the best you can hope for. Also, the potato field is at the top of a hill so there are spectacular views all around. You can see the troski (ruins, in this case of a 12th century castle) which give Rovensko pod Troskami it’s name (Rovensko under the ruins)
A dip in the above ground pool, a walk down to the pond, a nap, and then we had a cook out. Not in honor of the 4th, just how they do it at the cottage, but that’s O.K. I’m counting it as a holiday meal.

Well, happy 4th or July, for what it’s worth. Nothing against barbecue and fireworks. It is just a holiday, and has no greater real world importance than any other symbol, like a statue or a street’s name.
But, as a blogger, every symbol can be an excuse for a blog so I’m sure many bloggers are using this day as an excuse to write about what America means to them, so I’m just swimming with the current on this lovely, blue skied summer morning in Prague.
America began as a noble experiment. Like the ancient Greeks, we still had slavery, but July 4th, 1776, was nonetheless a crucial date in the history of democracy. The birth of America spelled the death of royalty as a major form of governance, and thus was a very good thing.
But as Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except, of course, for all of the others.” Democracy gives the people (in theory) exactly what they deserve, and the good old USA is sure getting a shit storm of bad right now. Yes, it’s deserved, but nobody’s celebrating.
Biden supporters are saying we have to vote for him or America is doomed. Many Sanders supporters are saying whoever wins between these two Bozos, America is doomed. Trump supporters are saying bring on the apocalypse.
In any event America, as we once thought of it, is done. Let us move forward into the future, taking the best of that experience – Democracy, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Blues and Hollywood – and leaving the worst behind.
Happy 4th, everybody. Enjoy the fireworks.

Cornell Belcher, who I’d never heard of before but apparently he was somebody important in the Obama administration, just went on MSNBC and told us progressives we should ‘shut up, grow up, and get in line to vote for Joe Biden.’ He also said that we could argue with him about policies after he was elected.
It sounds familiar. It sounds a bit Sarah Silverman at the 2016 convention saying “You’re being ridiculous,” which a lot of Bernie people have never forgiven her for. It sounds a lot like what Joan Biden said, way back before the primaries had even begun. “Other politicians might have better positions on, like, health care, but you’re just going to have to suck it up and vote for my husband” or words very much to that effect. In fact, it sounds like something Joe Biden has probably said himself on the campaign trail.
But most of all it sounds like every Biden supporter I’ve ever seen on Facebook, repeating the same damn post over and over and over again. Because they have no other argument. If they say Supreme Court, there are people online who will remind them of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. If they say he supports Medicare for All, they are lying, and if they say he supports the Green New Deal (and both of these are things I’ve actually read, that people actually typed) they are lying. Perhaps lying is too harsh a word. Let’s replace that with “haven’t got a fucking clue what they’re talking about.”
You would think, by now, that some of them would have realized the truth, that when they are asked what policy is it of his that they like, they can’t think of a damned one.
You’d think they would have figured it out by now, that if they can’t think of a single policy of his they like, maybe they’ve been bamboozled. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

In lighter news, Herman Cain has caught the Corona Virus, after attending Trump’s Tulsa rally without a mask, and maybe he’ll die.

Mark McCloskey, of Mark and Patricia McCloskey fame, has been on Fox and CNN today, giving his side of the story. He says their lives have been ruined by all the publicity.

Yeah, right. First, their lives weren’t ruined by the totally peaceful protesters walking past his front door, on the sidewalk. That’s like a minor annoyance, at best, even if it is a gated community.
Their lives were ruined, if anything, because he’s a pudgy, middle aged man who was wearing a pink shirt and brandishing a military style weapon, and his wife was no more impressive with her little pistol, they looked like they thought they were Bonnie and Clyde.
So, there were a lot of very comical memes. So, they have become the face of white privilege. That’s not ruining their lives. They haven’t been charged with anything. They haven’t been disbarred. They’ve still got their million dollar + home in an exclusive, gated community in St. Louis. They’ve still got their health, I presume.
One more thing. It’s a bit rich for him to say that the publicity has ruined their lives while he’s out there seeking more publicity.

How can you tell when an election is being rigged? Well, there are a few ways, actually. When the results are in sharp variance with recent polls, especially exit polls, you know something’s up. The U.N. has said that any difference greater than 4%, I think it was, is evidence of fraud. When people show up at the polls and find out they’ve been de-registered for some reason, you have to assume some shenanigans are afoot. Nobody gets de-registered in nature. That takes a deliberate action on the part of somebody, and it always seems to work against the candidates I like.
But there are two ways you can tell if an election has been rigged that I would like to talk about tonight, because I am pissed off about what just happened in Kentucky. First, polling place closures. Very much like removing individuals from the voter rolls, it is not something that just happens. Somebody had to make a conscious decision to close those polling stations. Saying “we couldn’t afford to keep so many open” is bullshit. If that were the case, they could have easily adjusted the number of polling places a year before the election, before they knew who the candidates were. Also, polling stations are generally government buildings, like schools. It’s not as if anybody has to pay rent. And the workers are volunteers. Unless that’s changed, since I last voted in person. Again, like the trick of losing people’s voter registration, it always seems to work against the more left wing candidate. If these were legit closures, it would be sometimes one way, sometimes the other.
Lastly, there is the slow count. This isn’t so much a way to cheat, but a way to cover up all the other cheating. I noticed it many times during the primaries: when Bernie won a state, the official announcement often didn’t come until days, sometimes months (California, 2016) later. When somebody else won, it was the morning headline.
Because the Kentucky primary was a week ago, they are thinking everybody will have forgotten about the massive closure of polling places. We have not forgotten.