Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

A couple of interesting topics in the news today.  Some good news for a change, and some more of the typical bullshit, because that apparently isn’t going away any time soon.
First, some good news:  it looks like Netanyahu is going to be indicted!  Not for war crimes, by the Hague, as I would have liked, but for plain, old fashioned corruption, by Israeli courts.  It’s not going to solve the problem, because whoever replaces him will probably be just as bad, at least as far as murdering Palestinian civilians goes, but it’s something in the plus column and gives us a bit of satisfaction, at least.
In the bad column, the rigging of Bernie’s town hall.  Although Bernie handled the situation well, it turns out that all the questioners were DNC operatives, or at least insiders.  It’s not just an accusation.  It’s what happened.  Some sharp-eyed people, and I’m glad we’ve got a lot of them on our side, spotted it, and a quick internet search showed the truth.  It was all over their Facebook pages and their Linked-In accounts.  Now, I’m sure some of my Democrat Centrist friends will say ‘They didn’t do anything illegal’ and I’m not sure about that, but in any event, it was dishonest as hell, and biased, and absolutely the kind of thing they were guilty of in 2016, and it’s clear proof that they intend to cheat again.  It was dishonest because they didn’t introduce themselves as DNC insiders, it was more “Concerned mother of two” and stuff like that.  The apologists will also say “Well, what does it matter, the questions weren’t that bad.”  That’s because when Bernie answers a question, he does so honestly and directly.  It makes him almost immune to gotcha questions, but the downside is he actually makes the questions sound reasonable.  It was unconscionable, and any Democrat with a conscience should take note.

Third, and this was kind of uplifting.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the questioning of Cohen.  Brava!  Simply amazing.  We’ve all seen it in movies, from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Legally Blonde II, the scene where the congressman gives a speech and sets everyone straight and everybody suddenly sees the error of their ways and truth and justice prevails.  Well, AOC is doing just that, every time she gets the microphone, except she does it even better than in the movies.  Nobody in congress has done more than her to move impeachment forward, and the nation owes her a debt of gratitude.

Words mean what they have come to mean, and word origins fade into the ever deepening darkness of the past, but as an English teacher and wannabe poet, I am interested in the origins of words.  I am not anti-semantic.
I have, of course, been accused of being anti-semitic, even though I’m half Jewish, because anybody who says anything critical about Israel gets that epithet hurled at them, and anybody who’s not saying anything critical about Israel in our current times is just not paying attention.
Whenever it comes up, though, there is always some clever clogs who feels the need to point out that Arabs are semitic, too.  Which is true, of course.  But, irrelevant.  The term anti-semitic has come to mean anti-Jewish and for anti-Arabic we say Islamophobic.  Yes, I’m aware that Arabic is a race, Islam is a religion, and the two are not the same thing.  Whatever, the Venn overlap is big enough.
You could also say that people from the U.S. shouldn’t call themselves Americans, because there are two whole continents chock-full of people who share that literal definition.  However, saying United Statesians would just sound like crap, so we carry on.

What got me thinking about this is how there are so many Democratic candidates the press constantly labels ‘progressive’ when, quite clearly, they are not.  Progressive is from the root progress, which means moving forward, and you aren’t moving forward if you are against solar and wind energy, because they not only are cleaner than coal and oil, they can also be made cheap, and massive.  In the future, we will think of energy as something similar to air, the way we used to think of water and I hope some day we will again.  That would be progress.

We tried the Netflix experiment a year or so ago and were very unimpressed with the selection available, so after the free month we canceled it.  But there is so much nothing on TV in English here, and I’ve already seen almost all the episodes of The Relic Hunter and Conan the Barbarian, so we decided to give it another shot.
First, we watched Star Trek Discovery.  Of course, most of you have probably seen that already, but I’m fairly impressed.  They’ve got the Klingons speaking Klingon and, I guess, since The Next Generation, it is acceptable for any new version of the show to make the Klingons look like whatever they want.  I will continue watching it, but I’m sure I’m the only one in the family who will.  That is the case with all science fiction.

Then we let Isabel pick a film so we got a schmaltzy thing called “The Princess Switch” which was another iteration of Parent Trap or The Prince and the Pauper, the old switcheroo, plus Christmas.  It was totally predictable and cringeworthy in parts, but the characters were likeable and, in the end, I kind of enjoyed it.
Then I watched about 10 minutes of Bojack Horseman, because I’ve heard such rave reviews, but 10 minutes was enough.  I guess that’s a selling point, though.  I can check out the stuff that everybody’s raving about, and I can see when everybody is full of shit.

Then I saw something called The 100, which I’d never heard of, but it’s science fiction and everybody else had gone to bed, so I decided to give it a shot.  Still on the fence about that, but I’ll certainly give it a few more episodes.  Are they bold explorers on a hostile planet or is it Lord of the Flies?  A bit of each, I suppose.

First of all, it’s not a coup.  A coup is internal.  The coup failed when Aguaido announced that he was president and nothing happened.  Maduro continued in office, the military did not revolt, all the radio and TV stations remained in the same hands.  I don’t know what he was expecting.
If the U.S. actually invades now, that will not be a coup.  That will be an invasion.

Second, I’m not sure exactly what people mean when they say Maduro’s election was fraudulent.  Were thousands of people who were registered to vote suddenly stripped from the rolls ?(Brooklyn)  Were the numbers of polling places reduced and their hours shortened?  (Arizona, upstate New York)  Were vote counters spotted whiting out some of the ballots? (California)  Were the televised vote counts flipped so the outsider candidate suddenly had fewer votes than they’d had a few seconds before? (Delaware)  Did the international election inspectors say it was fraudulent?  Actually, they said it was better than most.
Third, the ‘starvation’ story.  We see a fair bit of footage from Venezuela.  Demonstrations with thousands and thousands of people, both pro and anti-Maduro.  People crossing the border into Colombia.  People talking to foreign reporters.  I haven’t actually seen any people with their rib cages showing.  It could be the grocery stores run out of something once in a while, but it’s certainly not like Yemen.

And, most recently, there’s this ‘aid’ story.  What kind of sense does it make to impose sanctions on a country, attempting to deliberately wreck their economy, and then send in aid?  You could just lift the sanctions, let them trade normally (it’s a fairly wealthy country), and it wouldn’t cost a dime.

Bernie Sanders says he wants his supporters to play nice with the other candidates, and I guess with the supporters of other candidates.  Tulsi Gabbard is basing her whole campaign on Aloha, a sense of mutual respect, and love.

It’s good that they should have this attitude.  In fact, most politicians say stuff like this.  Some live up to it better than others, and those two live up to it exceptionally well.  But, does it have to apply to their supporters?

Of course, there’s no way to enforce that.  It’s not as if you say that “Amy Klobuchar is a crazy woman who eats salad with a comb,” somebody from progressive HQ is going to call you up and say ‘Cut it out!’  You might post a really funny meme about Corey Booker dressed like a hooker and getting dollar bills stuffed in his thong by Big Pharma, you won’t actually have to pay a fine.  No, this is all honor system, and it’s up to the dictates of each individuals ethics, personality, and twisted sense of humor.
But, since they’ve asked nicely, I’ll try.  It will be easier in some cases than others.  Warren, Klobuchar, and Gillibrand I find quite easy to ignore.  I’m not going to refrain from pointing out things I think are objectionable about them, but I’ll try to keep it fair, issue based.
Harris is another issue.  This is a woman who has profited from slave labor.  This is a woman who really does not believe that Black Lives Matter – she wants to let the police turn off their body cameras.  I’ll try not to be to disrespectful to her supporters, but that’s going to be difficult.
We’ll see how things progress.  I’m not making any promises.