Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

This business of Mike Bloomberg running for the Democratic nomination is bullshit. He is a Republican. He was a Republican when he held his only political office, mayor of New York City. He governed as a hard-line, law and order and screw people’s rights Republican. He supported George W. Bush, still praises the guy, and has supported and given money to other Republican candidates, notably Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, who narrowly defeated a Democrat and tilted the balance of power to the Republicans in the Senate.
And yet, he’s racking up endorsements like crazy. Over 100 mayors have endorsed him, and a significant number of them are black mayors, like the mayors of Washington, D.C. and Houston. The reason the black, female (Oh, btw, Bloomberg’s sexist as hell, too, and Emily’s List has endorsed him. RIP Emily’s list) mayor of D.C. is backing him is (I’m paraphrasing, but only slightly) “Trump won by spending a lot of his own money, now we’ve got somebody who can top that.”
They are so afraid that a Democrat who has FDR values might be smeared as a leftist that they are willing to run a mini-Trump against Trump. Even if it works, Democrats lose.
The nomination of Mike Bloomberg would not be a clever strategy to defeat Trump. It would be the complete surrender of the Democratic Party and everything it ever stood for.

I’ve been hearing a lot about how us Bernie Bros are rude, and argumentative, and divisive, and constantly attack other candidates’ supporters, and use bad language, and I really wonder where it’s coming from. Were there some incidents? Nancy Pelosi mentioned it a few days ago. And then Mike Bloomberg came out with a very nasty ad today, black backgrounds, breathless narration, screen shots of nasty things Berners have apparently said flashing by at high speeds, quotes from a couple Bernie hating papers talking about the terrifying Bernie Bros.
Screen shots? Yup. All of their talk about us swearing at people, and threatening people, and assaulting people, were all on line. That’s it. Occasionally a few Sanders supporters got overheated on the Internet. Made some rude comments. Put out some memes. That’s their whole case.
Welcome to the internet, Nancy and Mike. Stuff gets said. If people post stupid stuff, Sanders people respond.
I suspect it’s not our rudeness and aggression that bothers them. It’s that we’re right. That, for some reason, totally infuriates them, and makes them lose all sense of proportion.

Binge watching is a change in our lives which I would never have predicted. It’s different, when you swallow a show in big chunks, rather than in bite sized weekly increments. And I’ve been doing it a lot lately.
But, you also go through them too fast, like a pack of oreos, and they’re gone. We just finished watching The Big Bang tonight. It was pretty much the only show Helena and I could watch together. The Venn overlap of our TV tastes is very narrow. Occasionally I’ll get drawn into one of her dark Scandinavian murder mysteries, but she absolutely doesn’t want to watch any science fiction stuff or superheroes. But, we both liked The Big Bang.
A lot of people say it kind of lost the thread in the middle, and I can see what they mean. They niced everybody up a bit…Raj learned how to speak, Howard couldn’t be such a creep after he was married, stuff like that. They stopped going for constant laughs and added a bit of pathos. Like the relationship between Leonard and his mom. Yeah, there were some laughs, but it was a sad story.
I was O.K. with it. I knew the characters well enough by that point that that interested me and as long as I got a couple of laugh out loud moments in each episode – and there always were – I was satisfied.
Haven’t really decided what to watch next.

Some people say “avoid the comments section, that way lies madness!” but I say the comments section is where it’s at. That’s were you find humor, and an occasional nugget of wisdom.
That is also, of course, where you find the large and seemingly unstoppable flow of ignorance, vitriol, and pig-headedness that is the mainstream of human culture.
It ain’t pretty, but it’s important to know it’s there.
Anyway, just now someone posted an actual headline from CNN that said “Sanders leads the pack, Buttigieg sneaks up the rear.” Now, that might not have been intended as a gay joke at all. It’s a common enough phrase, and we all know what is meant.
But, (or should I say butt?) in the comments section, people were going to town. It is a law of the social media universe that every pun is met by a whole wave of puns, because that’s an easy way to look clever and everybody in the comments section is an attention seeking 3rd grader at heart. I know I am.
Of course, the tone police came in. I’m a bit of a grammar noodge myself, so I totally understand the urge of people to come in and, instead of discussing the topic at hand, tell other people how the conversation should be regulated. So, I’m not criticizing people for saying “You shouldn’t make gay jokes about Pete Buttigieg. That’s not nice, and Bernie wouldn’t approve of that.” They mean well, and they’re not entirely wrong.
But if by some bizarre fluke Pete Buttigieg, the racist and not overly competent former mayor of a mid-sized Indiana city, were to get the Democratic nomination, does anybody think for one second the Republicans will avoid gay jokes?
They will be coming at us from every angle, 24/7, full volume, and they won’t all be jokes.
In fairness, the Republicans will have similar attacks on everybody. If Bernie gets the nomination we’re going to be hearing “Communist Jew!” all day long for months. But, Bernie can deal with it. He will keep explaining what Democratic Socialism really means, and so will his supporters, and the anti-semitic thing has its limits.
It appeals to Trump’s base, but most Americans don’t really hate Jews that much. We love Barbara Streisand, and admire Ruth Bader Ginsberg. We laugh our asses off at Ben Stiller movies, and some of us even like Adam Sandler.
Pete, on the other hand, does not have policies. At least, not any he has clearly articulated. So, the election will become a referendum on homosexuality. Which is not what we need at this time, and which we would probably lose.

Just read an article (well, I read the headline and two or three lines down before I got to the big box asking me to subscribe which, fuck that) in the New York Times about how Bill De Blasio is set to endorse Bernie Sanders, and campaign with him in Nevada.
Now, regular readers will know I have little faith in the word of the New York (weapons of mass destruction) Times, but I can’t imagine they’ve got this wrong. It’s not as if the NYT wanted to write a story about a major U.S. politician endorsing Sanders, so they wouldn’t have made it up.
It is a welcome endorsement. Sure, he endorsed Hillary in 2016, as she humiliated him on stage with her bad comedy routine, but that’s bygones. He’s endorsing Bernie now.
He was mayor of New York City, the same position once held by Mike Bloomberg, so it’s good to get that perspective.
It is great that we’ve got endorsements from Cardi B and Lizzo and Killer Mike, artists I’d never heard of until they endorsed Bernie (I am 65, pasty white, and not exactly au courant with the musical trends of the young folk these days), but we’re still a bit short on endorsements from establishment politicians. De Blasio is a huge step in that direction.
So, thank you for your support, Bill! Together, we will make the world a better place.