Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Nobody seems to know exactly how much money Nancy Pelosi has.  When I googled Nancy Pelosi net worth, I saw estimates ranging from $29 million to over $100 million.  But, it’s a lot.  Her and her husband own a vineyard in Northern California, as well as a million dollar home in San Francisco, and I doubt she’s living in squalor in D.C., either.
As a politician, some people (DNC loyalists) love her, and some people (progressives) hate her.  The DailyKos, an internet forum which  was once thought of as  liberal, apparently  just loves the shit out of her.  They just spent  $85,000 (which they got their readers to donate) to send Nancy Pelosi 25,000 red roses.  Now, I’m not up  on rose prices, but that’s over 3 dollars a rose, and I imagine they could have negotiated a better bulk rate, but that’s not the point.  If you wanted to say how much you love her, or thanks for something specific, a dozen roses is enough.  Anything more is comical excess.
Also, it comes at a time when a lot of Federal workers are not getting paid, and some of them may lose their homes.  As someone else pointed out, there are homeless people living within a short walk of Nancy’s office, on the streets which can’t be pleasant in this weather.  $85,000 might have helped them a lot.
They say that there is a language of flowers, and of course that’s true.  Every gesture you make has some meaning.  And the meaning of these flowers is, quite simply, “Fuck the poor.”

I woke up  to the news that Tulsi Gabbard has announced her candidacy (well, technically she just announce that she’s going to officially announce soon, but that’s good enough for me) for president, and I couldn’t be happier.
I think she’s got a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination, because you’ll have about 10 or so other people running, who are all pretty much identical in their corporatist ideology, and then you’ve got Tulsi Gabbard.  They’ll split the faux-liberal vote between them, and Tulsi will get 100% of the progressive vote.
This is assuming, of course, that Sanders does not run, and I can’t see it.  He and Tulsi are very similar on policy and I don’t believe Bernie is so blinded by power and the adulation of the crowd that he’s going to jump in and split the progressive vote.  In fact, I suspect that they have probably discussed this between themselves.
Anyway, the trolling and the media hit pieces have already begun.  She’s friends with Hindu Nationalist Modi!  That seems kind of a bizarre accusation to me.  Yes, she’s met with him.  She’s also met with Bashar Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump.  She’s also met with Indian politicians who are not Modi.  And calling Modi a “Hindu Nationalist” is off, too.   He is the legally elected president of India, a country which is predominantly Hindu.  It would be  strange if he weren’t.
So, on the Internet, the debate rages.  Meanwhile, on TV…I don’t usually get my news from TV, because I don’t like  getting news from anyplace I can’t answer back immediately, I’ve become spoiled that way, but I decided to listen to CNN for a bit today, to see how they covered it.  They spent about 5 minutes talking about how Julian Castro has announced his candidacy, he’s Latino, he’s got an identical twin brother, he’ll have a tough  time catching Elizabeth Warren, etc…and they covered Tulsi Gabbard in one sentence, which included the phrase “and also.”
It’s the same exact bullshit they pulled with Bernie Sanders.  I don’t think it’s going to work this time.

“They say ‘a wall is medieval.’ Well, so is a wheel. A wheel is older than a wall.  The wheel is older than the wall, you know that? There are some things that work. You know what? A wheel works and a wall works. Nothing like a wall.”

– United States President Donald J. Trump
It’s an open question, really.  We don’t actually  know when the wheel was invented.  The first ones were likely smoothed logs or naturally round stones.  They might have helped to move heavy objects over short distances, but until the invention of the axle, and the invention of roads – and the first roads were probably just naturally worn paths along popular routes – they likely weren’t very  practical.
The first walls were probably just stacks of branches or stones, and from what we know  of simian intelligence, people probably did that at some point for defense before we were even completely human.  Same with the domestication of animals.  We’ve seen baboons keeping dogs as pets, so we can assume it goes way back with us.
Like the invention  of agriculture and the domestication of fire, we have absolutely no idea how far back either walls or wheels go, since by the time written language came along, we already had both of them, and the rudimentary versions would leave no traces for future archaeologists to date.  Wood rots.  Stones that were used to build a wall would be completely indistinguishable from stones that are just stones, after a couple hundred thousand years.
The point is that building a wall  between  the U.S. and Mexico will not serve any good purpose, will cost a lot of money, will be bad for property owners along the border, terrible for our relations with Mexico, which is a major trade partner, and bad for the environment.

Whether what he said  is technically true or not doesn’t matter.  What matters is  that it was a rambling, completely irrelevant statement, an indicator that the President of the United States is a stupid person who  thinks in stupid terms.  Not that we really needed any more indicators.

A few days ago I read an article, which was obviously satire and clearly labeled as such, about how Libertarians were finally able to enjoy America’s National Parks due to  the  government shutdown.  It was the kind of comedy which just writes itself.  Just put  in a lot of quotes that could be from Libertarians,  expressing  the Libertarian philosophy, and it’s funny.   All about how they could ride their dune buggies wherever they liked  and scare the shit out of all the animals and drop garbage everywhere because now they were finally free to.  It  was very funny.
Then, just now, I  read an article about how vandals are taking advantage of the shutdown to wreak  havoc on Joshua Tree National Park, carving out their own roads, dropping garbage all over the place and, in at least one case, chopping down a tree.  Now, I think the Joshua tree is technically a cactus, but that is not the point.  It is rare, it is protected (there is actually a National Park dedicated to it) and there is no reason  at all for  anybody to chop one  down, except that some people just like destroying shit.  So, I’m not laughing now.
This is the problem with Libertarianism (ditto Anarchy – the difference between the two groups is mostly stylistic, as Anarchists are far more likely to dress in black leather) and  the  current  unintended  experiment proves it.  Without any government oversight at all, things  quickly turn to shit.
It would be a wonderful world if people were good  enough to get  by with no government.  If nobody wanted to trash the local environment, if  everybody felt  responsible for the  products they sold, if people obeyed the  unwritten laws of proper  social behavior, we could have  our  utopian paradise, and we could have it  right now.
But, people are shit.  Until we solve that problem, it’s going to be real hard to solve any of the others.

The threads, by themselves, seem insignificant, but wind them around each other, twist a bit, and the strength  is incredible.
On one thread, re immigration and Trump’s stupid wall, I made a comment (only half tongue in cheek)about how the U.S. would benefit from unlimited immigration because anybody coming in would be smarter than that stubborn 30% of Americans who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, Noah’s Ark is a literal story, and global warming is a hoax.  There was only one response, from a woman who said “Noah’s Ark is literal, global warming is a hoax and Jesus is Lord.”  I suspected she might be responding in sarcastic mode, and checked  her profile.  Jesus all  over the damned place.

Then, I was reading about octopus intelligence.  There were several examples of how they could get out of their tanks whenever they felt like it, and how they could communicate with human beings.  Pretty amazing stuff.
Anyway, one strange side effect of our current climate changes is that octopi  are actually having a population explosion.  It’s not hard to figure out why.  Octopi lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time, on the evolutionary principle of massive numbers ensure a few survivors.  Almost all of the  eggs wind up as fish food.  But, as so many other fish in  the ocean  are dying, huge numbers of octopi are being born and reaching adulthood.  Of course,  they may in turn succumb to starvation, but along the way they may become the dominant life form of the ocean,  even of the entire planet, much in the way that after dinosaurs were wiped out by  an asteroid, tiny mouse sized mammals began to evolve and eventually became us.
So, even if global warming wipes out the human race, it may just make way for some future intelligent octopodal species.
As a human being, I think we should avoid going down that road.