Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It’s partly age, it’s partly marital status, and it’s partly just laziness and bad habits, but I truly don’t get out much.
So, when a friend who I haven’t seen for several years said he was back in Prague and wanted to get together, I had some conflicting thoughts. Of course I was looking forward to seeing him, but it also meant I would have to go out and spend time in a public place, and converse with real life people instead of sitting comfortably at home and typing out nasty messages to any who disagree with me.
Well, it turned out to be quite a lovely evening. My friend was a bit late but as soon as I walked into the cafe I ran into another person I know. I told him who I was meeting and asked if he knew him and he said “Oh, yeah, we’re good friends.” Then a young lady, who always appears to be cheerful and upbeat although she writes fairly macabre short stories, walked in. Before the evening was done, a few more people I knew had turned up. We talked about work, we talked about families, we talked about travel, we talked about politics a bit, and about books quite a lot.
It was great. I should get out more.

You’ve got to hand it to the right. They stick to their talking points. Stick to them like burrs to velcro. It’s one reason (only one – there are many) why Warren would be a horrible candidate against Trump. Even though I used to think that was no big deal, lots of people have family stories, nobody really knows their ancestry exactly, and it’s not such a terrible thing to claim native-American industry, they have won that argument. If she were the Democratic nominee (which she won’t be), we’d hear nothing but ‘Pocahontas, Pocahontas’ all day long. It would be more of an issue than foreign affairs, domestic affairs, and all of Trump’s illegal business affairs combined.
In the current Clinton-Gabbard kerfuffle, of course they are weighing in. By bringing up Modi again, mostly. In a way, it’s impressive. How did all these gun toting goombahs, all these entranced evangelicals who get their news from bible radio, suddenly become such experts on Indian politics? What’s even more touching than that is how concerned they are about Muslim rights in India. It’s almost enlightened of them.
It reminds of YMCA, the song by the Village People. You see it in demand at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, all sorts of clean-cut family gatherings and every time I hear it requested, I wonder: do these people know it’s a song about men who like to fuck men having a great place to hook up at the YMCA? Are they being sarcastic and cynical, are they actually being very liberal and supporting gay people, or are they completely ignorant of the ramifications?
I suspect it is the latter. I also suspect that most of these people are less than expert in the internal affairs of the Indian sub-continent.

Of course, just like crowd size, poll numbers, or amount of money raised, the number of endorsements does not guarantee electoral victory. But, it sure doesn’t hurt.
It was great on Saturday, when Bernie got official endorsements from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Michael Moore. Then today I was reading about a San Francisco city councilwoman who just endorsed Bernie, and then a bit later about some New York state senator. A city councilwoman here, a state senator there, it all starts to add up.
But then I went to look them up on Google and found out that 40 Democrats in key positions in California have endorsed him, and a similarly respectable number in New York.
This led me to go ahead and google “Bernie Sanders endorsements” and of course there’s a list. I was surprised and pleased both at the number of names and some of the names themselves.
Much has been made of Killer Mike and Cardi B endorsing Bernie, but I didn’t realize we also had Miley Cyrus, Norah Jones, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I knew we had Danny De Vito and Danny Glover, but I hadn’t realized Howard Stern is a supporter. Among comedians I was surprised and pleased to see the name Trae Crowder, who I think is hysterical, but I always had him figured as a bnmw type. I suppose he still might be but I won’t hold that against him if he’s a Bernie guy, too.
Of course, I’m sure other candidates have their fair share of high powered endorsements and the only one’s that count are the endorsements of average voters on election day, but I sure don’t remember anything like this from this point in 2015.
I’d say it’s a real good sign the atmosphere has changed.

I understand that words have meanings, and some words can offend some people. Some of the more egregious once I try to avoid myself. But it does come to a point where you are just trying to limit the political debate, reducing everything to “Duckspeak doubleplusgood.”
The topic was Elizabeth Warren. Someone had replied to a post about her being a flip-flopper, which she is, she’s the political equivalent of Simone Biles, but this person’s objection was that it’s a positive thing to be able to change your mind. In some circumstances, I agree that’s true. We all have to be willing to examine new evidence and re-evaluate our opinions from time to time, both in personal relationships and more weighty matters.
But, I replied by saying that in the case of Elizabeth Warren, we have reason to believe that her recent (since 2016) embrace of Bernie Sanders’ positions is less than sincere. Reasons like her daughter’s inside position in the for profit health care industry and her willingness to accept corporate cash.
She wrote back that there was no need for name-calling.
I read through my post a couple of times and couldn’t figure out what she was talking about and then I reread her comment and it was all about the use of the word flip-flopper in the original post.
So, I hit her with a bunch of synonyms. Vaccilater. Fluctuater. Waverer. Hedger. I could have gone with lane-changer, fence-sitter, or slimy opportunist bitch, but I refrained.
Because we wouldn’t want any name calling, now, would we?

When I look at polls, or political analyses, they often divide people into different groups. Men voters, women voters, black voters, white voters, voters under 30, voters over 65, and so on.
This election year is going to be different, and we should be categorizing our groups differently.
People who make less than $15 an hour, for instance. I imagine they’ll vote mostly for Sanders, because that would straight up get them a raise in pay. If everybody just voted 100% in favor of their own best interests, Bernie would get 100% in this group, but people are funny.
People who don’t have jobs at all, even though they’d like one. They should support Sanders in large numbers because Bernie is going to be creating lots of jobs saving the planet and protecting life on Earth as we know it.
People without health insurance. I know there’s some overlap between this demographic and the previous two I mentioned, but there are over 27 million Americans with no health insurance. Of course, they’re likely to break big for Sanders.
People who believe that the police shouldn’t be allowed to randomly kill black people would be better served by a Sanders presidency than any other.
Ditto for anybody who requires prescription drugs, like, to live.
People with children under 18, and who would like to see their kids go to college have a strong incentive to back Bernie Sanders for president. So do those kids’ grandparents, and aunts and uncles. Do it for the kids.