Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Maria Butina, Maria Butina, I haven’t written anything about Maria Butina yet, butina second I will.
First off, it makes me laugh whenever I  hear people talking about spies.  It just conjures up images of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and James Bond, and Austin Powers: The SpyWho Shagged Me, which I think is possibly the best movie title ever.
I think actual spying is outmoded, which is  what makes it so  comical.  Do you want to know what’s happening in Russia?  Learn Russian and get on the internet.  There’s more information there than anybody knows how to deal with.  The social, economic and political  ideas of all the world are there, and Russia is no exception.  If you want to know about  troop movements and such, you’ve got satellites.
I guess the charge is ‘unauthorized Russian agent,’ which is a lot less dramatic and probably a bit closer to the truth.

I’ve just been reading a bit  from  her blogs.  Basically, she loves guns, and doesn’t care for the way they’re heavily regulated in Russia and wants to start a Russian version of the NRA. You can’t hate her for that.  I mean, not any more than you’d hate your average American gun nut.
Still, it doesn’t quite explain  how all the money got into the NRA that they then gave to the Republican party.  That’s a bit dodgy.
So, we will see.  I  hope.

All political arguments end in hyperbole.  That’s one of the things I like about Bernie Sanders, is he manages to refrain from that.  I don’t, though.  So, I’ve been in  my fair share of  political arguments where both sides  dig in and before you know it, you’re at a standoff and there’s no  point continuing.
I guess this is because everybody  thinks their  opinion  is the  right one,  which is only  natural.  But, tonight I  want to  write about one hyperbolic phrase, one hyperbolic thought, which is coming mostly from my  side.  That is, that the Trump presidency  will  be the end of America.
First, the USA, that broad swathe of Central North America, between Mexico and Canada and with coastlines on the world’s two greatest oceans, is not  going to  sink into the ocean.  Florida, maybe, but we could deal  with that.
The people who  live in the USA are not going to  up and move away  en  masse.  I know  people who’ve never  been outside of Iowa.   Not  many, but plenty  of Americans have  never been abroad and have no intentions  of going.
So, it will continue to exist.  As Rome continues to exist.
If, by the End of America, they mean ‘America as we know it,’ well, yeah.  The Civil War ended America as people born  before 1860 knew it.  The industrial revolution changed the American  way of life irrevocably.  Two world wars. Viet Nam. Trump.
If they mean an  end to the American Dream, the idea that anybody can come, anybody can succeed, the idea of America as a beacon  to  the world, well,that ended back in the  1880s, with the Chinese Exclusion Act.
If they’re talking about  the end of  America as a global power, I’m  all for  that.  America has been a serious global power for  about  a century now, and we haven’t been doing a very good  job of it lately.  This precedes Trump.
So, yes, America will be diminished by Trump.  It will be damaged by Trump.  It  will be impoverished by Trump.  But, it will  keep trundling along.
The story won’t  be over.  The story  is never over.

The U.S.A. should, in fact, open up its borders and let in all  the immigrants who want to come, and not just because it  would be the right  thing  to  do.  It would also be of tremendous benefit to the future of the country.  Here’s why:
A long time ago, when the America’s were still a savage land and nobody had even imagined the United States, fireworks on the 4th of July, or NFL football, there was a crazy religious group called the Puritans who  believed in dressing in  black and giving their daughters weird names like Chastity and Abstinentia, and there was an even crazier subsect that nobody liked, sort of like Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Mormons, and they were so unpopular that they had to leave England.  So they went to Holland.  Holland accepts everybody, right?  But, even the famously tolerant Dutch have their limits, and they had to  leave there, too,  so they lit out for America.
Well, time went on and many  more people  came to America.  There were some religious fanatics among them, but mostly it was more normal people, coming because they were running from the law, or a bad marriage, or wanted an adventure and to make a lot of  money.  Still, the hard core Christians continued to breed, and, like many religions, they  felt it a duty  to  have  large families and carry on the  traditions.

Which is why approximately a third of all  Americans don’t believe in global warming, or  evolution.  It is why approximately a third of  all Americans believe creationism should be taught in schools.  It is why approximately a third of all Americans mistrust anybody with a college education, and look on science  as something to  be avoided.
These kind of people are  a threat  to  any modern, technological  society.  By my very rough calculations, if about 40 million immigrants come into the country, that would shrink  that third to about a fourth.
We’d be able to elect intelligent representatives, and get a whole lot of good shit  done.

Former Breitbart editor, former Trump advisor, open white supremacist and generally offensive  human being has a plan.  He wants to start a movement, called “The Movement,” to encourage right wing (i.e. racist) parties in Europe.
Now, there are a couple of  reasons why this  is  disturbing.  One is the timing.  While most Americans are angry at Trump for not opposing Russian meddling in U.S. elections (which, for the record, I remain unconvinced about), and Putin and others have pointed out how frequently Americans have interfered in other nation’s elections, Bannon is going to go ahead and interfere openly.  I question whether he should  be allowed to even visit Europe, if he’s got that attitude.
Europe, which I love and which  is where I live, already has a problem with neo-Nazis, and the politicians Bannon has already met with (LePen in France, Farage in England, Orban in Hungary) are a huge part of that problem.  They are still a minority, I  think, in most European countries, but they are vocal and this is not going to help.  Europe does, in fact, have a history  of extreme right wingers gaining political power.  Yes, I’m  talking about the Nazis.

My fingers are crossed for Julian Assange, or, as they say here in the Czech Republic, I’m holding my thumbs.  Nothing’s happened yet, and I hope nothing will, but reputable sources (Glenn Greenwald, for one) say that the Ecuadorian embassy in London is getting ready to hand him over to British Authorities.
You just can’t trust anybody, anymore.  Maybe that’s  being a bit harsh on Ecuador.  They have hosted him for years, which was quite heroic of them.  They are a small nation and, I imagine, the pressure from England and, even more so, the U.S., must have  been tremendous.
Also, I suppose  it’s possible  they just got tired of having a permanent guest in the embassy.  That’s what always  happens on “I Almost Got Away With It,” a reality crime show, telling the stories of people who’d run from the law and got away with  it for awhile.  If you watch for awhile, you learn a couple  of  things.  First, the police couldn’t catch a cold, as the saying goes.  Second, most of these guys get caught because somebody  calls  the police and narcs on them.  It’s al.ways like “Man, he’s my cousin and I don’t want to turn him in, but he just sits around the  house all day  drinking my beer and watching fucking television, so if you could come over and arrest him,  that would be cool, here’s my address…..”

The big question  is, though, what would happen if they do?   The British have been howling for his arrest, but as far as I  know he hasn’t broken any British laws, except  for  being in the country too  long, and technically he hasn’t been in the country, because he’s  been in the Ecuadorian embassy.  There’s that trumped-up Swedish sex charge, I suppose they could extradite him to there.  But, I suppose they’ll try to extradite him to the U.S., which is pretty horrifying as Julian Assange is not American and has broken no American laws.
I sure hope he’s got a good lawyer.  I mean, a great lawyer.