Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

In real life I am generally a non-confrontational person.  I don’t go around arguing politics with everybody.  This is normal human behavior, I think, and I try to be a normal human being in public, at least.

But, on the Internet I allow myself to be more argumentative.  The way I see it, that’s what it’s for.  Still, I’ve learned to check the sender before saying “You’re a fucking idiot” because I don’t want to offend anybody I know in real life, and often enough that two second consideration is enough for me to cool down, and edit the sentence to read “I believe you are mistaken because….”  Not always, though.
I do have a second line of defense, which is this blog.  When I see a large number of people making comments which I consider ill-informed, I do not need to confront them one-by-one, which would be time consuming and counter-productive.
So, this morning I saw a comment from someone (whose posts I generally like.  She’s a great photographer and writes about travel a lot.) saying that she was leaning toward Kamala Harris because of something Harris said during the Barr hearing.
Of course, I responded by listing a couple of horrible things Kamala Harris has done, but it’s an incomplete list because who has time, and anyway it’s futile because I’m sure she’s been informed of those things already.
But, it’s very symptomatic of a bigger problem.  People who are still undecided (and often there are undecideds right up until election day), and people who vote for superficial reasons.  They are, of course, the vast majority.  Probably 80-90% of the American people are more concerned with other things than politics, and spend a far greater percentage of their time talking about cats, or coffee, or travel, or music, or sharing family reminiscences with complete strangers.
I don’t know how to reach them.  I guess this blog is more of a question than an answer.

I don’t know how it’s possible we didn’t know about this before now, although I’m sure people in Burlington, Vermont did, but Bernie Sanders had a TV series, from 1986 to 1988, called Bernie Speaks: The Mayor’s Show, and it is awesome.
It is just Bernie being Bernie, a nice small town mayor.  I watched the one of him at the riding stable, and one where he was talking to a group of 2nd and 3rd graders, and one of him interviewing people at the mall, and this one where he’s talking about snow removal equipment.

It’s a treasure trove of ad material, stuff that we can share around the internet.
It shows a mayor who could take it directly to the people, talk to them, understand their interests.

It’s a reminder that he did a stellar job as mayor, taking a crumbling industrial town and revitalizing it, so it was named ‘America’s Most Livable City’ after he’d been mayor a few years and, despite only becoming mayor by ten votes, he won re-election several times after that with larger and larger margins, because he was doing such a great job.
It’s a nostalgic look back at the 80s, for anybody who’s nostalgic for the 80s, and it’s a bit of a reminder that things aren’t so different now than they were then.

For those who already love Bernie, it’s a nice thing to watch.  For those who don’t yet, I highly recommend it.

When I went to Google and typed in ‘coup definition,’ what I got was ‘a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.’  There were other, more benign definitions but that was number 1, and that’s very much what we’re talking about in Venezuela.
This is the second time that they have announced a coup, and the second time that Guaido has addressed his followers and declared himself president of Venezuela.  It is also the second time that the army failed to rally to his side, tens of thousands of Maduro supporters have taken to the streets, and he’s been left looking rather foolish.
It’s almost as if he doesn’t know how to plan a coup.  I kind of feel sorry for him.  I know what it’s like to plan a party and not have anybody show up.   It’s embarrassing.
First, if you’re going to announce a coup, you want to know in advance that you have some influential supporters.  Guaido has the U.S. government, I suppose, but if they gave him assurances that they would move in with troops as soon as he announced, then they lied.  Twice.  Kind of reminds me of the Bay of Pigs thingie, except that that resulted in many of the coup’s participants dead, and many others in jail, despite actual U.S. soldiers and aircraft being involved.
Meanwhile, Guaido is just left looking kind of silly.  He announced himself as President of Venezuela (for the 2nd time), but the army and the people are still very loyal to Maduro, Maduro got to give the big May Day speech to tens of thousands of enthusiastic fans, and Maduro is still living in the presidential palace.

If he was half the dictator most American politicians are saying he is, Maduro would have had Guaido arrested by now.  Perhaps shot.  Certainly that’s what Kim Jong Un would have done.  Or the Saudi King, except it would have been a beheading.
Instead, he has just let Guaido stand there, looking foolish because nobody came to his party.

Went for a nice, long bike ride today, because it’s the first of May and a holiday and we kissed underneath a flowering cherry tree.
It was a cool day, we were a bit worried it might rain, but it never did except for a few sputtering drops.  As we left the house, I was struck with this thought:  if, when I was about 8 years old or so, I had got a message from the future, saying “Your wife will give you a bike for your 65th birthday,” I would have thought “Great, that has all the elements.  That’s a long and happy life right there.  Health, love, recreation.”  And,  it’s true.  That’s pretty much how I feel.

We started off on our usual path, along the Rokytka, through the park in Vysočanska, but then at a point after that, we took a different turn to head in the direction of Hloubetin and, ultimately, Kbely.  I estimate it was about a 30 kilometer round trip.  Helena said it was actually a bit less than that, but I told her I was going to tell everybody 30 kilometers, so that’s that.

It was nice, just going a direction we’d never been before.  We crossed over a living bridge, plenty of grass and trees and room for small animals to cross the freeway, and a bike path, and we biked around a small airport but a plane landed right while we were there, always a powerful moment.
Now, I have been to Kbely many times, I teach there once a week, but I know one way in and one way out and that’s by bus, so we got well lost, but the whole trip was discovering new territory.
Stiff and sore now, but feeling quite virtuous.

Joe Biden’s campaign is off to a rocky start.  He has made a joke, not an apology, out of his overly handiness with young girls, his Anita Hill apology was rated as insincere by Anita Hill herself, his first meeting was with a bunch of lobbyists and wealthy donors, which did not go unnoticed, and his speech Monday…
Well, OMG is about the only way to say it.  I suppose a lot of other Americans couldn’t pronounce Allegheny County either, but for a Pennsylvania native, who is actually in Allegheny County giving a speech, it’s pretty bad.  Hustle for hospital could have been a Freudian slip, I suppose, with the state of health care in the U.S.  But what does extredible mean, as in ‘everybody took extredible cuts.’
The speech was full of stuff like that.  When I saw it, my first thought was “Fake News” but there is actual video of the speech (check link) and it’s been in lots of papers.  So, this is for real.
I see two possibilities.  First, he was drunk.  It’s possible and I don’t necessarily see that as a disqualifier for high office.  A bit careless, perhaps, in front of a major, televised speech, but not a major crime.  I have voted for drunks before.  It’s the kind of thing that if it’s a candidate you like, you’ll say it’s no big deal, and if it’s the other team, you’ll see it as an unforgivable offense.

It’s not as bad as plagiarism, for instance, which Biden’s been caught at before.  In fact, the speech was so bad it’s almost its own proof that it wasn’t plagiarized.  It certainly sounded like he was drunk.
I’ll be real surprised, however, if he comes out with a statement that says “Sorry about that speech, everybody, it had been a long day and I was hammered.  I’ll try not to do it again.”  That might win him a few votes, but I still don’t expect to hear it.
The other, and much more ominous, possibility is that it’s actually a campaign tactic.  Maybe he’s thinking “Hey, the inability to pronounce simple English words like ‘dignity’ and ‘hedge fund’ has worked for Donald Trump, maybe if the people think I’m a huge moron as well, they’ll vote for me.
It’s worrying to think he might think like that.  It’s even more worrying to think he might be right.