Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

God damn but the DNC, and their supporters, are just totally failing to realize the lesson of 2016, aren’t they?  Pretty much every day, I get into Facebook arguments with Hillary supporters who want desperately to blame Russia for her loss.  I do not understand why.  It will not change her loss into a win.  That boat has sailed.  To make sure it doesn’t happen again?  To make sure what doesn’t happen again – that nobody from a foreign country should pay Facebook for an ad that has Jesus arm wrestiling with Satan, or something like that?
Lots of people bought ads like that during the election  and spread stupid memes.  Hillary Clinton spent over a billion dollars and still  lost.  If she’s saying it’s because of ads on Facebook, she should seriously be embarrassed.

That’s not my point, though.  Let’s say they totally prove that the ads were paid for out of Vladimir Putin’s pocket, and that some voters were actually swayed by a Confederate flag and the motto “The South Will  Rise Again,” as if those people were ever going to vote for Hillary, but let’s just say, for the sake of argument.  Are the Democrats going to use that as an excuse to nominate Hillary Clinton again, or someone of her ilk?  (That ‘ilk’ includes Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and, I’m sorry to say it, Elizabeth Warren)  If they do, they will  lose again.
Because the lesson of 2016 wasn’t that Hillary Clinton lost a close election because of the electoral college, the Russians, sexism, or whatever.  The lesson of 2016 was that the Democrats lost because they no longer represent working class Americans.  That needs to change.  It needs to change soon.

Of course it is worrying that Donald Trump is arbitrarily (without debate, approval, or seeking expert advice, unless you count John Bolton as an expert, which he’s not) pulling out of the Iran  Nuclear Accord.
Even for Trump, it was a move of incredible stupidity.  The agreement was working.  That is, no state of war existed with Iran and Iran was not building nuclear weapons (according to everybody who knows anything about the subject).
But, either because Trump wanted to undo it just because Obama had done it, or because with South and North Korea making nice, he found himself without an external enemy, and every American president needs an external enemy, he nixed the deal,  ripped up the contract, stomped his little feetsies and said “No!”
Now, nobody in the world has any reason at all to honor previous agreements or contracts with America, he’s caused a rift between the U.S. and Europe, and he’s cost Boeing a hell of a lot of money.
It’s a kind of genius, really, to fuck up this bad.  If he actually succeeds in  starting a war with Iran, nobody at all will be on America’s side.  And, it comes hot on the heels of his boneheaded tariffs, which is going to cause a lot of hardship for anybody with a soybean crop to sell  this year.
I don’t know if this will actually lead to a war with Iran or not.  But, if it does, everybody  in  the whole world will know who the bad guys are, and it’s not the Iranians.

This morning we went to Pruhonice.  There is a park there,  not a large park but arguably one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  Not the most spectacular, just very pretty. It’s a series of ponds connected by a small stream, and a lot of flowers.  You enter through  a small castle, which I’m not sure was ever actually a castle, I get the feeling it was set there for  decoration, and a place to host the snack bar, but I’m probably wrong.  Then you go down  the castle steps, down into the valley,  down into  the  meadow.  You look from there back  up to the castle and there’s definitely a fairy  tale vibe to the place.  There were lots of flowers in bloom but we were a bit early for the blooming of the rhododendrons, which is what it’s famous for.  Some were in bloom, and of various colors, but I think we were too  early  for the main show.  It’s a question of days,  really, and  I’ve never hit it exactly right.

Then, this evening, we watched the Czechs win a squeaker against Switzerland in World Championship Hockey, so that was  pretty  exciting.  Switzerland was winning through most of the game, and it came  down to a shootout.

My unsolicited political opinion of the day is this:  It’s perfectly legitimate for Melania Trump to pick Cyberbullying as her First Lady cause, but it’s super lame that the pamphlet she put out is a total, word for word, copy of the one Michelle Obama put out when she was first lady.  Like, so  lame that in any previous administration, it would have been a scandal.  Certainly, no other first lady has ever done anything remotely as lame.

Which brings me to my main point: now  that Melania has picked an issue, now that she  lives in the White House and stands by her husband even though  she knows that he is A: a racist monster B: a threat  to life  on Earth as we know it, and C: a less than faithful husband, she is a fair target.
No more of  this “Don’t criticize the family” shit.  She is a member of that family by choice and deserves all the criticism she deserves – which is plenty.

Just got back from the May Alchemy poetry reading.  It’s in a new place, apparently ACT is no more, which is a shame.  The new location, though, is dead convenient for a Yellow liner like me, and I liked it because the performance area was separate from the bar, and that’s important.  Nothing can derail  a poetry reading than people just carrying on their normal conversations.  I did notice one drawback when I  stepped out at halftime.  Although marijuana is more or less legal in this country, there’s a police station right across the street and that could feel a little awkward.
My material didn’t get the huge reaction I would have liked.  A couple of people told me they liked it, but it wasn’t the Wow! moment I’d hoped for.  My poem about ‘Uranus smells like farts’ fell totally flat.

The featured performer was interesting, a bit of performance and dance and glitter mixed with the poetry.  The bubbles bit didn’t work too  well, but it was a noble effort.  There was a great new song from Ken Nash, a kind of industrial pseudo rap from Mike Rowland, a Taiwanese girl who almost fainted on stage, and more.
I saw a couple of people I haven’t seen for awhile, and made a couple of new contacts.

Over all, a satisfying evening.

I don’t think about bitcoin to much.  I don’t actually own any, nor am I in a financial position to invest.  You all know the old gambling maxim, ‘never bet what you can’t afford to lose,’ and the amount I can afford to lose is so close to 0 that it would not be worthwhile.
But, even though it does not currently affect me, I think about it sometimes, in the same way  I think of global warming, or the potential eruption of the Yellowstone volcano, or a large asteroid or a gamma ray burst hitting the Earth.  I think these are things we should be collectively worried about as a species, drawing up the old survival plans and whatnot, but I  don’t really see a lot  I can do about any of them as an individual.  So, I write.

With bitcoin, I don’t really know: will  this be the economic salvation of mankind, or will this destroy us entirely.  On the one hand, money is only a symbol.  It is what we all agree that it is, so if everybody accepts bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies, and the whole blockchain technology behind them, then they will continue to have value.
On the other hand, there is one thing that seriously weirds me out, like I don’t  even see how it’s possible, and that makes me nervous.  That is the fact that nobody knows where bitcoin came from.  Oh, sure, there’s a founder’s name – Satoshi Nakamoto- but that’s just a screen name and does not correspond to any  known living human being.

It’s a Japanese name, so it could be some high tech Japanese company – there are plenty of those, they are way ahead of  the rest of the world with their robots, and I think they’re right up there with the AI as well.  Or, it could be an AI program gone rogue.  If bitcoin is the product of a machine intelligence, is this the first sign that the machines are taking over?  But, just because it’s a Japanese name doesn’t prove anything.  Maybe it’s a 15 year old kid who loves anime and put this whole thing together in their room.  Admittedly, that would have to be some super smart 15 year old and, if so, they will undoubtedly  be a billionaire before they are 18, and more power to ’em.
Or, maybe it’s the Chinese, who are clearly trying to take over the world,  with their experiments in space and the belt road initiative and even that crazy social rating system which appears outrageous to most people with a human soul and even a bit of imagination, but might appear completely logical to a machine intelligence.
Or maybe it’s aliens.  I always like to consider the possibility of aliens.