Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Maybe it’s a good thing that all the campaigning and whoop-dee-do started so early this election cycle. I do hope it’s an aberration and not a permanent change, because the race for the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination basically started the moment Hillary lost, and the idea of permanent presidential campaigns is even more depressing than Christmas in July. But, there are signs that, in this case, it’s a good thing.
Some of the DNC’s early darlings have pretty much been knocked out of the race already. Kamala Harris, for one, is stumbling in the dark and clearly has no chance. Pete Buttigieg has had his 15 minutes of fame. Bill De Blasio and Kirsten Gillibrand are both out. Tim Ryan, who was never really in, is out.
It has made for a very crowded field, but maybe that’s a good thing, too. I don’t take Yang seriously as a candidate, but he has got people talking about UBI, his candidacy has moved the Overton Window to a place where Bernie isn’t to the left of, and that’s a good thing.
For, the most part, though, it’s a drab field, and Bernie sticks out, like a unicorn in a parking lot.
As more and more candidates drop out, it will be more and more obvious that his base is rock solid, and that’s because people have looked at his policies and like them.
It’s still about four and a half months before the Iowa caucuses, and I suspect senile old Joe Biden will have run out of steam by then, and Elizabeth Warren, in turn, will have the spotlight shined on her, and that will not be pretty.

So, I’m optimistic.

I just saw another post on Facebook about the horrors of air travel. This time, it was the fact that someone on the plane was sneezing, and the aggrieved victim caught a cold.
I don’t know what the solution to this would be short of designing airline seats as cubicles, with divider panels between each one, or maybe a plastic bubble coming down from the ceiling placed over people’s heads, like in a beauty salon. Either of these might make things awkward for parents with children, or people who actually enjoy talking to strangers on a plane. (I’m like that. You meet some fascinating people traveling)
Same deal as on buses and trains.
Bottom line, some people don’t like being too close to other people. Which is fine, I suppose. There’s plenty of free space in the world. If you get out of the city, there are places where you can look off into the distance and your line of sight, stretching all the way out to the horizon, will be devoid of human life. Even here, in my small flat in a big city, the only other person I’m aware of at the moment is my wife, and she’s in another room.
We have plenty of space. People bitch about crowds, but tens of thousands of them will show up to fill an arena to listen to a rock concert, or pack a stadium for a sports event, or to march for a common cause. And we tend to congregate in cities, while there is plenty of free space outside of them.
So, which is it? Do people love other people or do people hate and fear other people. A bit of both, I guess, and it changes from person-to-person, moment to moment.
We could stand to be a little bit less hysterical about it, though.

On the good news side, Tulsi Gabbard has qualified for the 4th debate, and Nancy Pelosi has given the O.K. for an impeachment probe. Which is still way short of saying, ‘O.K., he really is way fucking out of line, let’s impeach him’ which is what she should have said like about 2 1/2 years ago, but better late than never, yeah?
On the downside, the right’s reaction to Greta Thunberg’s speech is over the top and completely out of line. One guest on Fox News referred to her as a “mentally ill Swedish child.” Fox apologized quickly, by Fox standards, and said they won’t have that guest on again.
I’ve been having an exchange on Facebook with someone who doesn’t like her much and thinks climate change is not happening, that there is no consensus among scientists that it’s happening, and he also used dismissive language.
What the hell is wrong with these people? Why are they so resentful of people trying to do good? It is a conundrum.
But, just regarding climate change, the way I see it, there are four possibilities.
Either climate change is happening, and we decide to do something about it, or climate change is not happening, and we decide in error to do something about it, or climate change is not happening and we do nothing about it, or climate change is happening and we decide in error not to do anything about it.
In option A, we save the world, achieve a utopian paradise, and future generations will praise us mightily. In option B, we achieve a utopian paradise, but it won’t have been all that necessary. Future generations will praise us anyway, because living in a utopian paradise will be awesome. In option C, the status quo continues, and people keep driving around and around in their cars until all the oil is finished, and then we’ll transition to solar and wind. Oil companies will continue to rake in big bucks, which will make their executives and stockholders very happy. In option D, billions of people die, and the rest wind up living in sewers and abandoned coal mines, wearing oxygen masks and tanks whenever they venture to the surface to scavenge.
We don’t actually have 4 options, though. Either climate change is real or it isn’t, so our only choice is whether to do something about it or not.

I am very much in favor of doing something about it, because options A and B both wind up with us living in a utopian paradise, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.
If we don’t do something, we wind up with options C (general unpleasantness) or D, which is something we really should want to avoid.

While Nancy Pelosi blathers on about anything but impeachment, she is outflanked by a Republican. Bill Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts and sometimes Libertarian, is planning to primary Trump.
And he’s way beyond impeachment.

“Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election.* That’s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It’s treason pure and simple, and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty,” Weld said, on “Morning Joe.”

Now, I’m not considering voting for a Republican, and I’m sure he’s not actually suggesting putting Trump in the electric chair (possibly out of concern for the chair), but saying ‘Let’s kill the son of a bitch’ is a lot more promising than Nancy Pelosi’s “Oh, no, I don’t think we should impeach him.”
Democrats need to get out ahead of this and start the impeachment. If the Republicans decide to hang Trump out to dry their own selves, then the Democrats will look piss weak, no doubt about it.

*There are charges that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to dig up some dirt on Biden’s son (who does have some very shady business dealings) Trump has admitted that he talked to the Ukrainian president about Biden, but didn’t admit to saying anything specific.

If I were a time traveler, I’d be the kind that’s always screwing up and landing in the wrong century. No doubt about it.
We (Helena, Isabel and I – Sam was working) decided to go out today to see a re-enactment of the Battle of Bila Hora, which took place in 1620, near the beginning of the 30 years war, and it was a Protestant v. Catholic thing.
Basically, the Protestants, who’d controlled the territory for a while, not a real long while, had been pressing their luck a bit, and after they threw some Papal Ambassadors out of a window, which is kind of a traditional Czech method of getting rid of the political opposition, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic League and the Spanish sent up their armies to Prague. The battle itself was pretty short. The local boys were outnumbered, outflanked, and besides it was kind of cold and rainy and they’d have much preferred to have been in the pub. In the first half hour of battle, a couple of thousand Protestant troops had been killed and only about 700 Catholics, and so the Protestants abandoned the field. In rather a hurry, it could be said.
Anyway, I’d seen on the internet that it started at 5, but as we got there we noticed that there were more people leaving then arriving. The re-enactment had been at 3 or, as they write it here 15. Which I saw as 5, because I’m a dumbass and even after 20 years I’m not used to the way they tell time here.
Still, we wandered around among the tents, looked at all the people in costumes, had a trdelnik, and listened to some Medieval music. It was a good day. Next year will be the 400th anniversary, and we’ll try to make it on time.
After we got home, I looked up the battle on Wikipedia. It actually took place in November. I guess they just decided to hold the re-enactment now because the weather is still nice. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.