Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Donald Trump is in Pittsburgh right now, offending as many people as egregiously as possible, either because he’s retarded or he’s just that much of a jerk or (and in his case, this is what I believe) both.
After he said that the gunman wouldn’t have killed the eleven elderly people that he did if they’d had armed guards – this despite the fact that the gunman shot 3 perfectly well armed policeman, and despite the fact that most institutes of  religion would be a bit uncomfortable with the whole concept of armed guards, and despite the fact that it was Trumps sustained racist and xenophobic rhetoric that  probably led to the attack in the first place – the mayor of Pittsburgh had told him to stay away.  Lots of Pittsburgh citizens agreed – thousands signed a petition.  Yet Trump came.
A couple of other things: the night after the event, he had one of his hate rallies and used the song ‘Happy’ by Will Farrell, which is about as inappropriate a choice of songs as possible.  Farrell’s lawyers sent Trump a letter, telling him to never use his music again.
Mike Pence, who is actually just as big a jerk as Trump, although that’s hard to believe, brought in a rabbi to say a few words, which would be decent enough, but the rabbi was a “Jew for Jesus,” which most people would define as a ‘race traitor’ or simply ‘a Christian.’  It was probably the only Jewish person Pence knew, but that’s no excuse.  If you need a rabbi to speak at a funeral, you can find one the same way you’d find anyone else.  On the internet.
I know this is all just piling on, and other people have said the same things I just did, but it needs to be said and repeated.  The handling of this incident was insensitive and hurtful, even by Trump standards, and they are the lowest standards anybody has ever seen.

I’m quite worried by Bolsonaro’s election.  Partly because of Brazil’s size (both in population and in area, it’s more than 50% of South America), partly because he’s not even shy about being perceived as pro-torture (pro-torture – when did that come to be an acceptable position? – oh, right, the U.S. did that), and partly because, being a right wing jerk, he’s likely to just let lumber and agricultural interests clear cut the Amazon, to the extreme detriment of the entire human race.
Another reason his election worries me, though, is that it’s part of a trend.  The U.S. has Trump, of course, but there’s also Britain, where the government is so far to the right that they’re leaving the European Union, the Czech Republic (where the Prime Minister is also one of the countries wealthiest people), and Poland.
What the hell is going on?  All the main stream media just prattle on about “populism” and a “feeling of frustration among the voters” and “disenfranchisement” and bullshit phrases like that, but the answer is  much simpler.
It’s money.  Just as American politics are  dominated by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelstein and people like that, in addition to the oil companies, and the big banks, and the arms manufacturers, and the pharmaceutical industry, so are other countries.  Campaign cash wins elections, and the rich have a lot of it to  spend.  In many cases, the donors might be the same across national boundaries.  The biggest corporations are all transnational, you know.
It almost seemed, in 2016, that Bernie Sanders,  with his huge number of $27 donors, would be able to compete with them, but they screwed him.  No, we won’t be able to beat them with money, because they have almost all the money.  What we do have is the truth, all the good issues, and social media to spread our message on.  That is going to have to be enough.  If we expect to save the planet, and the human race, that is going to have to be enough.  We’ve got 12 years.

The two nicest things I saw today were that in India, they are building a completely new city on the banks of the Krishna River (Hare Krishna!), which they are calling ‘the world’s most sustainable,’ and it will have all sorts of cool stuff like canals and water taxis, and electric buses and bike lanes, and lots and lots of trees, and solar panels on the rooftops, and they are expecting it to have a population of about 3 and a half million people, and in China they have built the world’s first ‘solar road’ which is a real, driveable road constructed from solar panels.  The road is only a couple of kilometers long, so it’s definitely in the prototype category, or you could say experimental.  If it works, though, that would be awesome because there is a huge amount of surface area worldwide tied up in roads and if that could be used it would help a great deal to save the planet within the 12 year time frame we have been given.
Meanwhile, in the world’s most powerful country, there have been multiple hate crimes, the worst of which was the lunatic who came into a Jewish Synagogue and murdered 11 people, because he really, really didn’t like Jews.  The incident in Kentucky was also racially motivated, but against blacks.  There were only two victims, which doesn’t even count, officially, as a mass murder in the U.S., because mass murders are so common as of late.
In my adopted homeland of the Czech Republic, we celebrated 100 years since the founding of Czechoslovakia, but it  was a half-hearted celebration.  Czechoslovakia hasn’t existed since 1993, but nobody celebrates that because that was a break-up.  I wonder if the Slovaks are celebrating today?  Hope so.
There was a big military parade in the afternoon, the kind of thing Trump wanted in the U.S., but nobody was very impressed.  The Czech Republic isn’t at all known as a military power, and if they’d wanted to have a parade to celebrate the country’s strengths, there should have been a parade of athletes and beer drinkers.  Also, it was a very rainy day, so  I’m not  sure if there were even any fireworks.
Scorecard for the day: We’re not doing as spectacularly as the Indians and the Chinese on the green front, but thank goodness we’re not the USA.

I am not a big sports fan, unless it’s something  special like the Olympics, or World Cup Football, or an American Football Super Bowl, or maybe a title fight in boxing.  When everybody’s talking about it, it becomes history, and I’m very interested in history and like watching it in the making.
But baseball is usually too dull a game to get me to watch it, no matter how high stakes the game, no matter what records are likely to be broken.  But, admittedly, an 18 inning game is pretty amazing, it’s like twice as long as a regular game.  Still, not as long  as a cricket match, those things take days.
Anyway, after 18 innings, a record length for the World Series (there have been longer in regular season play), the Los Angeles Dodger managed to eke out a 4-3 win.  So, congratulations to the L.A. Dodgers.  Still many games to go in the series, though.

My best news of the day was a friend request from an old friend, my best friend on the McGovern campaign back in ’72, we spent a lot of hours together that season, printing up fliers, handing out fliers, canvassing, stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, answering phone calls.  It was great to hear from him.  Still  living in Des Moines, but it sounds as if life has been good to him.   He’s got 11 grandkids.  That’s a happy number.  And we were just a couple  of wild ass hippies, back in the day.
As much as we complain about Facebook, and recently it has been guilty of some egregious partisanship, this is what I love about it.  That part where it says ‘People you should know’ really includes some people you should know, and some people you haven’t been in contact with, like forever, but should be.

Not a real serious blog tonight because I’m feeling a bit under the weather.  Sore throat, ear ache.  It actually hurts when I eat.  So, I’ll just fill up the space by posting a cute little poem I wrote the other day:
Switzerland has its mountains
and Norway has its fjords
Africa has lions,
it’s a thrill to hear them roar
The USA has Disneyland
but when all is said and done
Everyone in the world looks up
and sees the very same sun

South America has its jungle
as wild as it can be
and Europe has ancient cities
with a lot of history
Egypt has the pyramids
the Sahara has its dunes
but we all look up at the sky at night
and see the very same moon

The world’s diverse and beautiful
but one thing we should know
is we all live here together
and there’s nowhere else to go

Glad they caught the bomber.  Good night.