Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Well, we’ve got a glimpse now of what a Green  New Deal will look like, at least what  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would like it  to look  like, and it’s kind of  an  awesome vision.
She wants to eliminate waste from agriculture, by  the  expedient of  creating shit-tons of  small  farms, environmentally correct farms, with a negative carbon footprint (that is a positive thing), growing organic vegetables  and such.
I think it’s brilliant because it not  only helps improve air quality, making it a very  Green idea, indeed, but it also puts a lot  of fresh vegetables on the market, thus fighting in the war against obesity, and it could pretty much totally  eliminate joblessness, and homelessness.  To repeat: it is good for the environment, could end homelessness and bring unemployment down  to as near 0% as possible, and will fight obesity.  So much winning.
I totally agree with the program, and can even agree with an emphasis on that, but I  think it needs to be part of a multi-pronged push.  We also need to  clean up industrial waste, by transferring the energy grid to solar and wind power, and away from coal, and nuclear.
We also need to reduce traffic emissions by having  electric  cars, and magnetic levitation, or hyperloop trains, and more bike paths.

And, whatever else we do, we need  to plant a few trillion more trees.  But I do like the healthy farms idea.

At first glance, the proposal to make Election day a federal holiday looks to me like a gimmick – a nice little vote-getter, because who can object to a holiday?  I’m willing to support it, because there’s no reason to be against it, but I don’t think it really gets to the heart of the issue, which is that our elections are controlled by big donors from the get go and by the time John Q. Public marches into the voting booth, there is no one to vote for who isn’t a tool of the plutocracy.
But, Mitch McConnell’s protestations that it would give the Democrats more power makes me like it a little bit more.  Anything that screws up the Republicans.
Here are some other proposals which would screw up the Republicans, by making Democracy more Democratic.
Replace the electoral college with one person-one vote.  This  is never going to happen because all  the people screaming about it currently are only screaming because their candidate lost.  Also because it’s in the Constitution, and it’s in  there for a reason.  The smaller, less influential states (at the time of the constitution, that was places like South Carolina and Georgia.  Today it includes a lot of places like Wyoming and Alaska) didn’t want to join a union that was clearly going to be dominated by rich people in Boston and New York.  There’s a logic to it, that still holds today.  Also, it’s never going to happen because small states have overwhelming control of the Senate, and nobody ever votes to give away their own power.
Design voting districts by computer algorithm.  End gerrymandering.  This might benefit one party, then the other, as demographics shift, but it would  be fair.
Statehood for D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam.  This would be a big change, maybe bringing 6 new Democrats into the Senate, and forcing a redesing of the flag to cram  3 new stars in, but I think it would be a great thing.  Also, a U.S. state where the majority language is Spanish = awesome.
I don’t see any of these having a  chance of passing, but if Mitch McConnell objects to Election Day being a federal holiday, by all means let’s make it a federal holiday.  I vote yes.

Some people think I do nothing but argue politics on Facebook all day every day and that’s not entirely true.  There is some truth to it, of course, I spend way more time arguing politics on Facebook than I should, more than is productive or healthy, and probably more than my actual knowledge of the subject warrants, but that is true of most people, on all sides.  But, it’s not entirely true.
Sometimes I argue about poetry on Facebook.  One of the most common arguments is rhyming poetry vs. non-rhyming poetry.  As anybody who knows my poetry knows, I am a huge advocate of rhyming poetry.  I’ve probably blogged about this before (I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before), but here are a few of my reasons:

1.  When I’ve written a rhyming poems, I know it’s a poem.  It fits at least one classical definition.  Of course, once you start accepting free verse, then almost anything can count as a poem, and I see that as a big problem.  Not that all of it is bad, but most of it is.  It’s like people are talking, and giving their opinion, and then they add some line breaks and a bit of unnecessarily flowery language, and voila! It’s a poem because they say it is.  IMO, that’s bullshit.
2. Because I can.
3. Because so few other people are doing it, it makes me unique.  Well, it’s one of the things that make me unique.  The other is just not plagiarizing.  Everybody who can abstain from that is unique.  So, being unique is not necessarily being great.  But, it’s better than not being unique.
4. I keep hoping that people will turn my poems into songs.  It’s happened a few times.  Never with great success, but it’s not likely to happen at all if they don’t rhyme.
5. Rhyme is mnemonic.  I do want people to remember my poems.
6. By writing to specific rules, i.e. rhyme and meter, it actually makes  things easier.  Strange but true.  You stop worrying about, for instance, which is a more powerful word, Fall or Autumn, and you just use the one that rhymes (usually it’s Fall)
7. The path to enlightenment through the random juxtaposition of words.  It’s a bit like alchemy.  They had no clue about how to turn lead into gold, so they just tried every damned thing under the sun.  You put all the rhyming words in there, invent sentences that end with those words, and before you know it, you’ve expressed a thought that you hadn’t even thought of yourself.  Which is kind of an amazing feeling.  You become a conduit for truth to enter the universe.  Admittedly, that doesn’t happen every day, but I like it when it does.

I must say, I have been surprised many times over the past few years at how deeply corporate interests are embedded in American politics, and how fiercely they will fight to keep their power.  The cheating of Bernie Sanders, apparently, was only the beginning.
When Tulsi Gabbard, as I’d been hoping, announced her candidacy, she  was hit with an absolute torrent of abuse, slander, and flaming bullshit.  It was Modi, Modi, Modi all day long.  People who’d never heard of Modi before were screaming “She met with Modi!”  I didn’t really get it.   Most Americans, when they think of India, think of Indian food and films like Slum Dog Millionaire and  The Hotel  Marigold.  Who  hates India?  Why was it supposed to be a bad thing that she met with their Prime Minister?
Then Kamala Harris announced her candidacy and CNN offered her a Town Hall, right off the bat.  Not too surprising, the establishment loves her, they’ve been talking about  her as a candidate ever since she entered the Senate, a mere two years ago.  I was a bit surprised when I found out that TimeWarner, who own CNN, was also the largest contributor to her campaign, although I probably  shouldn’t have been.
What really surprised me was how well that worked out for her.  The last couple of days I’ve been hearing from lots of people  on my Facebook  page about how much they like Kamala Harris, how she ‘hit it out of the park,’ etc…  I’m sure these are well-intentioned people.  I am surprised that  all it takes is to say “I’m for Medicare for All” and “I’m for a  Green  New Deal” and people say “Great!”  (She’s already walking back the Medicare for All statement), without even  looking into her record.
How she refused to prosecute Steve Mnuchin, when he was head of Wells Fargo, merrily cheating people  out of their homes with illegal  foreclosures.  Steve Mnuchin, of course, is now Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.  He was also a large  contributor to Harris’ election campaign.  How she supports the death penalty  and 3 strike laws.  How she worked to keep people in jail, even though there was evidence they were falsely  accused, in fact, evidence of prosecutorial misconduct.  How she  is against police  wearing  body  cameras.  That one really  throws me.  There is no reason for the  police not  to wear body  cams, unless they are planning on beating people  up and killing them.  In short, how she’s an awful human  being.
But, one  town hall meeting and a bit of positive  framing and all that goes away.

We are in  for an uphill fight.  It’s even a steeper hill than I thought it would be.  But, we have the truth on our side.  We just have to keep repeating it.

Last year was a pretty bad year for hurricanes, as was the year before that.  And, last summer was extremely, at time painfully, hot.  After the summer came wildfire season, and a huge swathe of California was deforested.  That takes more trees out of the equation, which  means more carbon in the air that doesn’t get absorbed, which means the Earth gets hotter.
I don’t understand all the science behind it, but it also means the Earth gets colder in the winter.  Our entire planet is having mood swings.  This is not good.  This is really super bad.  Scientists have warned us that we have 12 years to reverse this pattern or the results will be catastrophic, perhaps rendering the planet incapable of supporting human life.
There’s a foreshadowing of that happening in the American Midwest right now.  Coldest winter ever, I’ve heard, and I can remember some damned cold winters growing up there.  Dangerous to go outside, is what they’re saying.

So, the president of the United States responds to this with perhaps his stupidest tweet yet: “In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!”

Credit where it’s due, for a change there were no misspellings or egregious grammatical errors.  But, to deny global warming, which could cause the extermination of the human race, is incredibly stupid.  Yet, he’s done it again and again.  This is on a par with his ‘rake up the leaves’ comment, and throwing paper towels to the people of Puerto Rico.  He’s just not taking the situation seriously.
Now, some of his supporters might say “Lighten up, he’s just making a joke,” but they are as stupid as he is and their opinions should not be taken seriously.

Others may insist that global warming – a better phrase would be human caused climate change, but it’s too long and people wouldn’t understand it – is not a real thing, or is part of the natural cycle (which doesn’t mean it can’t kill us, or that we shouldn’t take measures against it)  They are against the solid consensus of climate scientists, so I’d say we can safely disregard their opinions, too.  In fact, if we want to survive as a species, we have to disregard their opinions.

In any event, it probably means there will be serious flooding in the spring.  Brace yourselves.